


Avalanche

by draculard



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alien Planet, Alien Technology, Angst, Bathing/Washing, Blood and Injury, Brainwashing, Competence Kink, Entomology, F/M, Grysk (Star Wars), Huddling For Warmth, Mind Control, Mystery, Parasites, Science Experiments, Science Fiction, Sharing Body Heat, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Survival Horror, Thrawn Makes Deductions, Wilderness Survival, world-building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23033152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Admiral Thrawn, his aide, and his second-in-command go on a planet-side mission to a snowbound moon.What could go wrong?
Relationships: Karyn Faro & Eli Vanto, Karyn Faro/Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo, Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo & Eli Vanto
Comments: 24
Kudos: 92





	Avalanche

In all her years in the Imperial Navy, Karyn Faro had never once had the occasion to go on a planet-side mission with less than ten stormtroopers. In most cases, she’d had an entire unit, plus a contingent of assorted enlisted men and a handful of ground officers at her disposal. She couldn’t think of a _single_ instance where her commanding officer had tagged along with such a small group — when the CO came with you, it meant an entire _division_ of troopers. And ever since she’d reached the rank of First Officer, her COs had been far too high-ranking to bother with planet-side missions at all. 

But here she was, planet-side at the base of a snowy mountain with Admiral Thrawn and his aide.

And absolutely no one else. 

She’d had the chance before the shuttle landed to talk to Commander Vanto alone.

“Oh, yes, ma’am,” he’d said immediately. “This is normal. He does this all the time.”

“No guard?” Faro hissed back, unbelieving.

“No, ma’am,” said Vanto. “Usually it’s just the two of us; we’ve been doing solo missions planet-side pretty much since we graduated from Royal Imperial.”

Sitting as they were in the aft passenger cabin of the shuttle, Faro was roughly 60% certain that Thrawn couldn’t hear them. She and Vanto had been tasked with inspecting the Imperial-issue winter gear while Thrawn handled the landing; Faro turned a thermal body sleeve over in her hands, checking it out for tears in the material or breaks in the internal coils.

Not that it mattered much; these things were outdated, cheap, and incredibly faulty, only functioning properly about a third of the time. Like pretty much everything else in the military, Thrawn’s TIE Defenders excluded, they seemed to have been purchased with a “hopefully nobody will ever have to use these” sentiment attached. 

“At first, we weren’t really _choosing_ to go on solo missions,” Vanto mused. He kept his voice down despite the durasteel door between their own passenger cabin and the cockpit. “At least, _I_ wasn’t. But our captain sort of forced us to — I think she was hoping we’d get taken out of commission somehow, or killed — and to be honest, I’m pretty sure that’s just how Thrawn likes to do things, whenever possible. Back on the Thunder Wasp, he had us take out a spice ring and only called the stormtroopers in when all the smugglers were stunned.”

“Why?” asked Faro, abandoning the (definitely faulty) body sleeve to inspect a standard-issue winter coat. The synthetic fur around the hood was dyed white to match the rest of the parka and felt thin beneath her fingers — not exactly the type of insulation she would have chosen. 

“Well,” said Vanto, “I think because he knows _he_ can handle pretty much anything that happens planet-side — and if he gets to hand-pick the officers who come with him, he’s gonna choose people he knows well, meaning he has total confidence that everyone in his group can pull through in an emergency, too. Let’s say he picks five officers to go with him to some desert wasteland; he’s gonna choose the five people he’s most confident in for that particular mission and landscape. He goes in with five officers, he comes out with five officers. But if he’s got a huge contingent of stormtroopers, he can’t _possibly_ be familiar with all their strengths and weaknesses, so he can’t safely wager that they’ll all make it out unscathed.”

“I guess I’ll just trust you on that,” said Faro a little briskly. Frankly, it didn’t make much sense to her — her experience in the Clone Wars had always leaned more toward safety in numbers — but Vanto was, after all, the resident Thrawn expert. 

“Yeah,” said Vanto, casting her an odd, contemplative look. He pulled another thin-looking parka from the crate and shook it out, examining the tag and discarding it in a neat pile off to the side, where they’d been laying everything labeled extra-large for the admiral. 

Faro had met many, _many_ doughy Imperial officers who required extra-large uniforms. She hadn’t met many, she reflected with a wry smile, who needed it because of _muscle_ size. 

She and Vanto had already changed into their winter gear — the useless body sleeves pulled on first, then their regular tunics, thick snow pants, and the parkas — by the time the shuttle landed and the durasteel door to the cockpit slid open with a hiss. Thrawn emerged a moment later, methodically unbuttoning his tunic as he scanned both Faro’s and Vanto’s new uniforms for flaws.

“Take these,” he said, handing Vanto a small, electronic device at the same moment Vanto handed him his folded winter gear. Before Vanto could ask what it was, Thrawn turned and passed an identical device to Faro. She held it in the palm of her hand, watching as a small white light in the center of it blinked on and off.

“What—?” she started, but Thrawn had already smacked his hand against the refresher door release and ducked inside to change. She glanced at Vanto, eyebrows raised, and tried to finish her question. “What—”

“Those devices are small but powerful beacons using a short-distance radio wavelength,” came Thrawn’s muffled voice from inside the refresher. “I would like both of you to secure one beacon each in the quick-seal breast pocket inside your tunics.”

They obeyed immediately, both of them unzipping their parkas to place the beacons inside their regular uniforms. The breast pockets in question were exceedingly small, designed for officers to carry single data cards or ID credentials without ruining the crisp lines of their uniforms. Faro had to remove her own ID in order to fit the beacon in; she saw Vanto remove a datacard from his own breast pocket and slip it into his parka instead. 

“Does he expect this to be dangerous?” asked Faro, eyebrows furrowed. 

“I expect no danger from our contact,” said Thrawn from inside the fresher — and if he could hear them from in _there_ , did that mean he’d heard them from the cockpit, too? A moment later, the fresher door slid open and Thrawn stepped out, adjusting the parka over his uniform. For a moment, he stood silently before them, running through a series of stretches which reminded Faro almost of a muted martial arts warm-up. Belatedly, she realized he was only doing what she and Vanto should have already done — checking to see how much the new uniforms impeded their movements in case of a fight.

“Interesting,” said Thrawn, bending his arm at the elbow and examining the parka sleeve. “Clearly the designers of this uniform expect the need for camouflage to outweigh the need for a rescue. Surely a more attention-catching color—”

“You mentioned a contact, sir?” said Vanto, his voice measured and respectful. Immediately, Thrawn ended his inspection of the parka and resumed his usual ship-side posture, confident and almost regal.

“Indeed I did, Commander. We are here to meet a contact of Admiral Konstantine’s named Varren Knuss, an Imperial agent currently attempting to infiltrate Rebel strongholds on the planet Goppa, roughly four billion klicks to the east.” 

“Admiral _Konstantine_?” asked Vanto. The distaste in his voice was clear. 

“Yes,” said Thrawn. “It is what he calls a political favor.”

Already feeling weary from this mission, Faro resisted the temptation to roll her eyes. She could tell from the stiffness of Vanto’s face that he was doing the same. When it came to Konstantine, the words “political favor” almost always translated to “busywork I can’t be bothered to do.”

Thrawn seemed not to notice their exchange of exasperated looks; he fetched a datapad from the secure storage shelf and powered it on, taking a moment to look at what appeared to be a local holo-map. “Our rendezvous point is further downslope,” he murmured, eyes fixed to the screen. “The people of this moon largely lived underground until the Clone Wars, but a few small residencies remain standing on the surface south of this mountain range. Local agents from Amsurs have kept a few of those residencies in good maintenance and equipped with working generators for use as safehouses.”

He crossed the cabin floor and stopped beside the now-empty crate without looking up. After a long moment reviewing the map, he finally glanced inside the crate, frowned, and looked around the room as if searching for something. “I see we have not been provided with gloves or protective facial masks,” he said.

“No, sir.”

“That is suboptimal,” said Thrawn, making a note of it on his datapad. “On our return to the _Chimaera_ , Commander Vanto, please see to it that Supply requisitions full winter uniforms, including functional body sleeves and—” He examined the thin, regulation skullcap folded into his outer pocket. “—woolen caps from the Byoth Sector rather than from the warehouses at Imperial Center.”

“So noted, sir,” said Vanto. 

“In the meantime,” said Thrawn, critically eyeing his parka, “these will suffice. Our rendezvous point is five kilometers south, through the forest. I’d like the two of you to memorize this map before we depart.”

He passed the datapad over to Faro first; the highlighted section of the map was small and simple to commit to memory. She ceded it to Vanto quickly and crossed her arms, biting her lip as she mulled over Thrawn’s words.

“You implied earlier that this planet is deserted, sir,” she said.

“And so it is,” said Thrawn, inclining his head.

“So why land the shuttle five kilometers north of the rendezvous point?” asked Faro. “If you trust this Varren Knuss….”

“I said I expect no danger from Varren Knuss,” Thrawn corrected. “Admiral Konstantine’s profile concerning Knuss indicated no violent tendencies, but it _did_ indicate a certain level of carelessness some commanders might find unacceptable in a contact. I trust him not to pull blasters on us; I do not trust him to notice if he has been followed here by someone with fewer moral compunctions.”

He accepted the datapad Vanto handed back to him gracefully; without pausing, he turned to the captain’s safe situated low against the shuttle wall. The lock whirred at a brief touch from Thrawn’s fingers and opened to reveal — to Faro’s immense relief — three small hold-out blasters, fully charged and set to stun. 

“High Command refused authorization to carry weapons to this rendezvous,” said Thrawn mildly. “Per Imperial Regulation 18-24-9-1, however, blasters of this size are classified not as weapons but as tools used primarily for animal control and, in some cases, experimental art.”

He handed one to Vanto, who smirked as he took it, and one to Faro, who tried not to look overly pleased that Thrawn was so gleefully breaking the spirit of the law. Or impressed that he could remember the full regulation code, for that matter. Briefly, she wondered whether it was something he’d memorized specifically to impress them or if it was just the sort of thing he could easily recall, once seen. 

Based on her past experience with Imperial officers, she suspected the former. Based on her limited time with Thrawn, she … well, who could say? She hardly knew him, really.

“One last thing,” said Thrawn brusquely, snapping her attention back to his face. He tucked the datapad under his left arm and reached into his parka, pulling out a thin pair of black gloves. “These will offer you little protection, unfortunately,” he said to Faro as he offered them to her, “as they are intended to be worn as an outer layer over weather-resistant gloves. But some small degree of protection is better than none, and your service record indicates a heightened vulnerability toward frostbite.”

 _Frostbite?_ Faro blinked as she took the gloves, noting the grip-fast pads on the fingers and palms. She’d never had frostbite in her life; what the hell could Thrawn have seen in her service record to indicate _that_?

Still, she slipped the gloves on without question. They were too large for her hands — baggy and over-long in the fingers — and they were clearly intended more for climbing than for protection, but she was sure she’d be grateful for them anyway once they were all out in the wind. 

And with that, as if he’d read her mind, Thrawn slung a small waterproof rucksack over his shoulder and gestured them all toward the door.

* * *

It all went downhill from there, both literally and — more importantly — in the sense that they all very nearly died before they reached the tree line. 

Or at least, what Thrawn called the tree line. From Faro’s point of view, they didn’t look much like _trees_ ; what she could see of the trunks were craggy and hard-frozen, more like an ice-slicked rock surface than anything else, and with trunks as wide around as five men, they were more massive than any plant Faro had ever seen in person. The leaves, too, were atypical — they formed a reddish, fur-like fringe around each tree, hanging in thick curtains from each enormous branch. 

If these were the _only_ trees on the planet — if there was no source of flammable wood anywhere in this snowy hellscape — Faro could perfectly understand why it was deserted. She glanced behind her at the tall, white mountains, following Thrawn and Vanto purely by the crunch of their footsteps on the snow.

And then suddenly those footsteps stopped. Faro halted, too, her attention snapping back to the admiral as she nearly ran straight into Vanto. Vanto was staring at Thrawn, his brow knotted beneath his skull cap, anxiety and confusion evident on his face.

And Thrawn, eyes hard, was looking at the cracks in the hard-packed snow beneath his feet.

“Run,” he said. 

Vanto half-turned, instinct clearly telling him to run back to the shuttle, but he crashed right into Faro and she pushed him away, simultaneously using her grip on his arms to spin him back toward the trees. She didn’t have any logical reason for this — only instinct — and Vanto acquiesced, likely for the same reason. The next second both of them were sprinting full-tilt to the strange, rocky forest, with Thrawn following close behind.

She heard the deep _whumph_ of an avalanche a moment later and knew they were doomed. 

“ _Run_!” Thrawn barked again, _quite_ unnecessarily, and suddenly he was ahead of them, leading the way through the gigantic, rocky trees. Faro pumped her legs, quickly reaching the kind of speed she’d only reached a few times before — and always in battle, always when running from certain death. Beside her, Vanto frantically matched her pace — graceless, clearly not a trained runner, but keeping up. 

_Don’t look behind you,_ Faro told herself. She could hear a wave of crushing snow behind her crashing down the mountain — the ripping sound of smaller trees being torn from the ground — the shriek of metal as their shuttle collapsed beneath the weight. Cold wind forced its way down her throat as she ran, making her lungs and throat burn.

And you _couldn’t_ outrun an avalanche. She knew that, Vanto knew it, and Thrawn had to know it as well. You could run until your lungs were burning — like Faro’s were — and your legs were shaking (like Faro’s were), but you couldn’t escape that moving wall of snow. Not when you parked so close to the damn mountain in the first place. Not when your shuttle was buried and you were on foot, half-sprinting, half-tumbling downslope through a forest of—

Abruptly, five meters ahead of Vanto and Faro, Thrawn slid over the snow to a graceful halt. In the next few seconds, before her brain could catch up, Faro nearly flew right past him — it was only his cold hand closing around her wrist that stopped her as she passed. He pulled her with him beneath the fur-like fringe of the tree, Vanto panting close behind, and—

“Climb,” said Thrawn, voice rough. He pushed Faro toward the thick, craggy surface of the trunk, half-lifting her to the nearest handhold. She’d only just managed to pull herself up to the first low circle of branches when Thrawn climbed past her, Vanto scurrying up at her heels.

Her arms trembled. Her legs felt weak, useless from the run; the skull cap pulled so tightly over her head had left strands of hair dangling in her face, obscuring her vision. She still couldn’t catch her breath.

But the gloves Thrawn had given her were meant for climbing — had grip-fast pads sewn into the palms and fingers — and she made her way more than halfway up the tree just as quickly as she’d sprinted for the forest. The roar of the avalanche was all she could hear, thrumming deeply into her bones, urging her on. Ahead of her, Thrawn moved quickly and effortlessly from branch to branch, gaining higher ground by what seemed like pure instinct, his eyes locked on the approaching wave. 

When he reached a branch thick enough for all three of them and high enough — hopefully — to withstand the fast-approaching wall of snow, he flattened himself with his chest against the rocky surface and reached down, offering Faro his hand. She gripped it tight, allowing him to pull her the rest of the way, and collapsed against the branch, clutching it as though her life depended on it.

The snow was close now. It was all she could hear, practically all she could see. Beside her, Thrawn reached down again, this time offering his hand to Vanto; he’d lost his cap in the climb and his hair was tangled, tumbling over his eyes, forcing Thrawn to shake his head every few seconds for a clear view. On the branch beneath them, Vanto lunged for the outstretched hand, his fingers brushing uselessly against Thrawn’s.

His other hand, the one anchoring him to the tree, slipping on the layer of ice over the trunk.

The next moment, the snow had swallowed him. He was gone. 

* * *

Just before the snow hit him, Eli raised his right hand and covered his face. It wasn’t a conscious decision — it was a reflex, a flinch, really — but in the tumble that followed, the walls of snow sucking him under and crushing him, pressing the breath out of him, that flinch may have saved his life. 

He was aware, distantly, of being swept away from the tree. He was aware, too, of near-misses beneath the snow — debris churning against him, mobile enough (and moving in the same direction as Eli) that his few brushes didn’t injure him. 

He was aware of his wrist snapping.

And then, with his head pounding, with his lungs empty, and with his nerves screaming for relief, Eli came to a halt. The avalanche had stopped. Still, he felt like he could feel the snow still throbbing against him, shifting and crushing like a malevolent beast.

His right hand — the one with the injured wrist — was still in front of his face. He could feel the bones of his wrist grinding against each other and twisted his hand carefully, experimentally, wincing through the pain. Functional. Not ideal, but not broken, either. 

Slowly, carefully, Eli wiggled the fingers of his right hand, pressing them as deep as he could into the wall of snow directly in front of his face. His breath helped him, melting enough of the snow for Eli to scrape it away. 

Breathing space. Okay. So he wouldn’t suffocate, not yet, but what the hell was he going to do now? Gritting his teeth — again fighting with the pain, the body-wide soreness permeating his muscles — he tried to move his limbs and got nothing in response. The snow was packed in so tightly around him that all he could seem to do was twitch his arms and legs. Definitely no way he could dig himself out, then, and even if he could…

Which way was up?

Slowly, Eli closed his eyes, listening to his own harsh, shallow breaths. Panic had gripped him at the very edge of his consciousness, threatening to spread, and he needed to stop it before he could. Eyes closed, he couldn’t see the snow around him. Eyes closed, he could pretend the raw, scraped pain on his face was trivial, that he could move his arms and legs whenever he wished.

He took a deep breath.

Another one.

And finally, totally calm, he opened his eyes and surveyed the situation again. He was not packed in quite so tightly as he’d first thought; the snow was thick, yes, but still soft, almost powdery, and if he really gathered his strength and worked through the weariness, he could—

Yes, _there_. He _could_ kick his legs. He _could_ climb out of this. Fantastic — now for the other question.

Gathering up all the moisture in his mouth, Eli spit. 

And watched as the spit seemed to fall upward, past Eli’s nose, past his eyes, past his hairline.

He’d landed upside-down, then. Grunting, moving slowly, Eli pulled his legs up to his chest and pressed himself into the smallest ball he could manage before inching his way around beneath the snow so that he was facing up. His fingers were bare and already numb from the cold, so he wedged them into the snow above his head unfeelingly, the same way he would drive a spade into the ground, and used them to tunnel.

Snow sprayed down into his hair, catching in his eyes and his open mouth, the flakes fat and half-crystallized. Soon, Eli was working blind, and he could feel the panic creeping up on him again. He stopped periodically, gasping for breath, to spit into the snow again and ensure he was still swimming up, not digging himself deeper into the hole. 

And then, unbelievably, his left hand edged through the snow far above his head and hit the open air. A moment later, before Eli even had time to gasp, a large, cold hand closed around his, fingers wrapping tight around Eli’s wrist, yanking him upward so hard he thought his arm might come right out of the socket.

And he was free, crumpled on the surface of the snow with all the air he could ever ask for and his commanding officer kneeling before him, keeping him upright. 

* * *

Vanto, predictably, did _not_ look good. Still, Faro supposed he probably looked better than _most_ people who’d been trapped beneath an avalanche, considering he actually survived. He sat huddled at the edge of the pit of broken snow through which he’d been pulled, every breath he took deep but shaky, his body trembling. Thrawn knelt next to him, one steadying hand on Vanto’s shoulder.

Without glancing at her, he used his free hand to pass Faro the primitive-looking palm display he’d used to track Vanto’s beacon. She pocketed it absently, watching as Thrawn gently maneuvered Vanto into a proper sitting position.

“Are you injured?” Thrawn asked. Vanto sucked in another deep breath before spitting out the answer.

“Sprained my wrist.”

“Nothing more?” Thrawn checked. He took Vanto’s right-hand wrist and examined it, running one blue thumb over the palmar ligaments. Faro could see Vanto gritting his teeth, but he made no sound.

He certainly _looked_ like he’d injured more than just his wrist. The snow had left raw scrapes over his face, sometimes so deep that they oozed blood. As he examined the injured wrist, Thrawn reached up and almost absently wiped a particularly large drop of blood off Vanto’s cheek, just below his right eye. 

“You were not struck by debris?” Thrawn asked. 

“No,” said Vanto, still breathless. “Not really.”

“You remember your rank, name, and command?”

Almost smiling, Vanto recited, “Commander Eli Vanto, ISD _Chimaera_ , aide to Admiral Thrawn.”

Satisfied, Thrawn stood and pulled Vanto to his feet, steadying him again when Vanto staggered. Perhaps too quickly, Thrawn pulled away, leaving Vanto to find his balance on his own; Faro resisted the urge to step in and help, and a moment later Vanto’s eyes were hard and clear again, his feet firmly beneath him.

“Night is falling,” Thrawn remarked. He unstrapped his rucksack and slid it off his shoulders, removing a datapad from inside, its screen freshly cracked. When he tried to turn it on, it sparked along those cracks, sizzled, and died. Looking absolutely unsurprised by this, Thrawn tucked it back into his rucksack and settled his hands on the straps, surveying the woods the same way he might survey a battlefield from the bridge.

Faro joined him, calling up her memory of the holo-map. It remained clear in her mind — but in her haste to escape the avalanche, she’d hardly paid attention to her vector. They’d moved downslope, yes, but downslope in which direction? How far had the snow carried them?

She glanced at Vanto, caught a glimpse of sickening worry on his face as he came to the same conclusion. Both of them sneaked looks at Thrawn; Faro found herself praying, fingers crossed, that he would turn to them any moment now with that familiar look of regal confidence on his face and say, _Fortunately, commanders, I mapped our path of escape along the same vector to our rendezvous point. Follow me._

She got half her wish. Thrawn turned to face them, confident and composed despite his torn uniform and disheveled, snow-speckled hair. The wind almost stole his words before Faro could hear him.

“It would be wisest to make camp for the night,” he said. “Our rendezvous point with Varren Knuss is one kilometer upslope and undoubtedly buried in both snow and scattered debris. Come morning, we shall continue southeast to Post 4C when the sun is high, granting us higher visibility and temperatures; until then, I suggest we make shelter.”

“Shelter,” Faro repeated. She meant it to come out skeptically; instead, she just sounded resigned. She’d already glanced around at their surroundings — kilometers full of nothing but snow and those enormous, petrified trees. And then there were the three of them, armed with no tools, no survival kits, no rations. Only three small hold-out blasters and a broken datapad. 

What the _hell_ were they going to make shelter out of?

Before her, Thrawn was already striding right up to one of those trees as if he had the problem solved. It was a relatively small, short tree, at least compared to the giant they’d all scrambled up earlier, and he circled it slowly, his eyes running up from the very bottom of the snow-choked trunk to the tip of the branches not far above. 

“This will do,” he said decisively. Again, he slipped the rucksack off his back, allowing it to fall into the snow. From within his parka, he removed his hold-out blaster and gestured for Vanto to do the same.

Then, face blank, he handed both blasters to a nonplussed Faro.

“The snow here is approximately six feet deep, covering a substantial portion of this particular tree,” Thrawn said. “Commander Faro, use these blasters to remove branches from other trees in the vicinity. Take great care not to ignite the fringe — the more of which you can get, the better. Alternate blasters for each shot. Do you have your vibroblade?”

Throat tightening, Faro only nodded. She’d become so used to carrying her vibroblade everywhere over the years that she’d damn well forgotten it even existed.

“Once you have removed the branches,” Thrawn said, “use your vibroblade to slice the fringe free. It is vital we have a sufficient number of both branches and fringe.”

Faro nodded again, jaw clenched, and started to turn. This she could do; she had her orders, she had a task, and she’d carry it through. It’s what she was built for.

“One moment,” said Thrawn.

Faro turned back, eyeing her admiral expectantly.

“Your gloves,” said Thrawn, inclining his head toward Vanto, who looked just as confused as Faro felt. Carefully, Faro wedged the blasters into the crook of her arm so she could remove the thin climbing gloves, which she tossed to Vanto. “Thank you,” Thrawn said. “Carry on.”

As she stalked through the snow — sinking up to her thighs with nearly every step — she could hear Thrawn delivering instructions to Vanto.

“Use the loose snow to pack together a wall one meter in height on the western side of this tree,” Thrawn said. Faro pushed her way through the snow banks to the nearest tree and stopped there, glancing briefly behind her. Thrawn was circling his chosen shelter carefully, drawing a line in the snow with his foot, head down as he spoke.

“Ensure the wall is tightly packed,” Thrawn said. “The wind—”

The wind (speak of the devil) snatched his next few words away. Sighing, Faro turned back to her task, closing numb, bare fingers around one of the hold-out blasters. 

Aiming carefully at the intersection between the nearest branch and the rock-solid tree trunk, she set the blaster to kill and fired. A chunk of ice and granite was obliterated, leaving a massive dent in the branch. Automatically following Thrawn’s instructions, Faro switched her blaster back to stun and grabbed Vanto’s — then stopped.

Making her way to the tree, she examined the branch’s wound. Her blaster fire had cut almost entirely through the petrified wood, leaving behind a crater that steamed and sparkled in the light like it was full of ice on the inside, too. Faro cocked her head, thinking it through, and dipped her hand into the snow bank nearby. 

She lobbed a handful of snow against the crater. The first handful melted on contact, turning quickly to steam. The next two handfuls took longer to turn to water; the fourth didn’t melt at all. Satisfied, Faro laid her hand against the branch and found it cool to the touch. 

Bracing herself against the trunk, she slammed her shoulder right into the fresh-burnt crater. The branch snapped beneath her weight and catapulted forward, sinking into the snow a few feet away. 

Excellent. And no charge wasted, either. Turning back to the tree, Faro located another branch — around the same length, but a little thicker — and wrapped one hand around the reddish fringe hanging from it. Holding the fringe as far back from the branch as possible, she trained Vanto’s blaster on the spot where the branch met the trunk and fired, this time keeping the muzzle of the blaster so close to the rock-like surface that tiny fragments of it scraped her knuckles when she pulled the trigger. 

She used her grip on the fringe to catch this branch when it fell, tossing it over to the long, thin hole in the snow a few feet away, where it clattered down loudly on top of its brother. Glancing over her shoulder, Faro saw Vanto busy at work packing a low western wall while Thrawn knelt in the snow nearer to the tree, his parka laid out neatly on the ground outside the circle he’d drawn.

He was digging, Faro realized — scooping out giant mounds of snow with his bare hands and laying them on his open parka. As Faro watched, Thrawn moved quickly and efficiently, gathering enough handfuls of snow onto the pile to make it more than half a meter high. Then, without pausing, he barked something to Vanto and turned back to the ever-widening pit around the trunk of the tree.

Vanto, meanwhile, ceased work on his wall and leaned back on his heels, reaching blindly behind him until his fingers closed over the sleeve of Thrawn’s parka. He pulled the parka closer to him, emptied the mound of snow onto his wall, and tossed it back to Thrawn.

Faro eyed the whole process critically, chewing her lip. She was beginning to understand Thrawn’s plan — _completely_ understand it, she hoped. If he dug a shelter six feet deep around the tree’s trunk, they’d be insulated on all sides by the snow without having to worry about a possible collapse suffocating them in the night. At the same time, the tree’s low-hanging, fringe-covered branches would cover the top of the pit, trapping their body heat inside — and providing a helpful hand-hold when they decided to climb out.

She glanced down at the branches she’d severed so far and remembered Thrawn’s instructions to remove the fringe. He’d be laying the bare branches down to form a floor, she suspected, so the cold from the snow wouldn’t seep into them while they slept. With the fringe covering those branches, their floor would be not just warm, but soft, too. As for Vanto’s western wall, it would effectively block the wind from sweeping snow drifts down into their pit.

And Thrawn had thought of all this, Faro realized, in a period of time when she herself had only been able to vaguely hope she remembered how to build a snow cave — a technique which would have taken hours of exhausting, energy-eating work, all for a shelter which would have collapsed quickly thanks to the western wind.

 _Well,_ thought Faro wryly, switching from Vanto’s hold-out blaster to Thrawn’s, _at least I figured out how to save the blaster charge. Score one for Karyn._

Sucking down a deep, chest-freezing breath, she went back to her tree for more branches.

* * *

It was past nightfall when Faro knelt beneath the fringe at the edge of Thrawn’s two-meters-deep pit and handed him the first of the branches. He took them one-by-one, laying them in a latticework at his feet and adjusting his position by a step or two at a time until the snow at the bottom of the pit was entirely covered up. 

As she handed him the last branch, Faro scooted back from the edge and poked her head through the fringe, glancing out at Vanto. He sat with his back to the western wall, gloved hands working quickly to weave a mat out of the pile of fringes Faro had provided him with earlier.

They’d both finished their tasks before Thrawn had finished digging out the shelter and packing the walls, leaving them with plenty of time to iron out a few details — Vanto, with his gloves, had taken over the task of weaving the severed fringes into two tightly-knit semi-circular carpets. He was seeing this through as best he could, though Faro could tell even his fingers were stiff from the cold. Faro, with her blasters, had seen to it that the branches she’d cut were more or less equal in length. 

Quickly, Vanto knotted the loose tendrils at the end of his second mat and scurried over to the pit, handing them both to Faro. They pushed back through the shelter’s fringe, half-crawling to the edge where Faro glanced down at Thrawn. He stood upright, a little shorter than the pit was tall, patiently waiting for her to return. Inside, the wind howled a little less fiercely than it did outside the fringe, but it still battered Faro’s ears and the exposed skin on her face. Minute shivers caused Thrawn’s shoulders to twitch, but his face was impassive. 

“Sir,” Faro said, teeth chattering as she handed him the mat. She felt rather than heard as Vanto disappeared back through the fringe and crawled inside again a moment later, dragging Thrawn’s snow-crusted parka with him.

Beneath them, Thrawn stooped to lay the mats over the latticework of branches. They fit almost perfectly around the trunk, leaving only a few minuscule bare spots which the three of them could easily avoid. 

Silently, Thrawn stood again and turned to Faro, offering his hand. The shelter was finished.

Faro spared Thrawn a quick, exhausted smile before pressing all three hold-out blasters into his outstretched hand. He took them, placing them gently on the far side of the pit, while Faro grabbed hold of a low-hanging branch on the trunk and swung herself down into the pit. The floor of their shelter was strange — the lumps of petrified wood beneath the thick fringe mats causing an uneven, imbalanced sensation — and she stumbled on the landing. She reached out to brace herself on the snow wall; at the same time, Thrawn grabbed her by the arm and swung her to the left, maneuvering her so that both feet were firmly beneath her and her hand never so much as touched the wall.

“A precaution,” said Thrawn mildly as he steadied her. “The walls are tightly packed; nonetheless, I find it best not to take chances. Commander Vanto?”

“Sir?” said Vanto from overhead, his voice weary.

“Do you require assistance?”

Vanto shuffled about in the snow above, out of sight and silent. A moment later, he glanced down at them from over the edge with Thrawn’s rucksack hanging from his left hand and his parka hanging from Vanto’s right. 

Like the blasters, Thrawn took them and set them aside. Then, as he had with Faro, he offered Vanto his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, Vanto took it, using Thrawn’s weight and his own grip on the tree trunk to scale gracefully into the pit.

 _More gracefully than I did, at least,_ Faro thought with some chagrin. She shuffled out of the way as Vanto landed, maintaining his grip on Thrawn’s hand until he regained his balance. Almost immediately, Vanto sunk to the ground and leaned his back against the trunk, head tipped back and eyes closed as he sighed.

“My thoughts exactly,” Faro muttered, sliding down to join him. Thrawn stayed standing a moment longer, reaching out of the pit to adjust the fall of the fringe above them. Then, crouching down next to his rucksack, he pulled off his sweat-soaked undershirt and folded it into the bag, revealing for just a heartbeat the mess of scars over his chest and ribs. Before Faro could determine what had caused them, Thrawn had removed his uniform tunic from the rucksack and shrugged it on. 

He was still doing up the buttons when he sat down between Faro and Vanto, bringing his rucksack with him. Faro started to scoot away, giving him more room by reflex, then registered exactly how much heat was emanating from her admiral and decided to stay put and soak it in.

“You’re normally cold,” said Vanto to Thrawn, almost accusingly. 

“I am somewhat overheated at the moment,” said Thrawn, leaning back against the tree. “For the moment, that works to our advantage.”

He was right about that; he’d been working inside the pit for nearly two hours now, manually digging their shelter with the fringe above trapping his body heat as he worked. Already, the shelter was so toasty that Faro had stopped shivering and could feel herself starting to thaw. On the other side of Thrawn, she could see Vanto slipping his skull cap off and using his teeth to remove the snow-soaked gloves.

“In the morning,” said Thrawn, opening his rucksack, “provided there is no storm, I shall contact the _Chimaera_ with the coordinates of the safehouse. They will meet us there with a shuttle. If there is a storm, as I suspect there will be, we shall make our way to the safehouse alone and wait.”

“What kind of storm?” asked Vanto suspiciously.

“A blizzard,” said Thrawn, “with more than its fair share of lightning, I suspect. You’ve noticed, Commander Faro, that the trees here contain an unusual amount of glass?”

“I have, sir,” said Faro, eyebrows furrowed. She’d noticed, all right, but she hadn’t really wondered why. She’d been too focused on her task for that.

“High amounts of silicon dioxide are present in the plant life of this planet,” Thrawn said. “That much is evident from the consistency of the foliage on each tree; when lightning strikes, the silicon dioxide is heated and liquefied, leaving veins of glass in every branch. From the sheer amount of damaged trees in this area, it’s clear lightning strikes often, likely aiding the petrification process. With the strong winds we’ve experienced tonight, I expect the blizzard and subsequent lightning storm will reach us by noon tomorrow.”

He pulled a small brown package from his rucksack and paused for a moment, carefully unwrapping it. His hands, Faro noticed, were raw and purplish-red, his fingers covered in raised spots where his blood vessels had constricted from the cold. Not for the first time, her stomach twisted, and she glanced across at Vanto and caught him staring at Thrawn’s hands, too, looking sickened. She wasn’t sure which of them felt guiltier for taking the gloves.

“As such,” Thrawn said, gingerly plucking at the cloth, “I suggest we leave by first light. There will be rations waiting for us at the safehouse. Until then, these must do.”

He flipped back the last fold of cloth and revealed three ready-made combat rations, each weighing in at roughly 3,000 calories.

Faro thought, for just a second, that she might cry. 

“You brought _food_?” Vanto asked — from the slight crack in his voice, Faro guessed he was feeling similarly overwhelmed. 

“Yes,” said Thrawn simply, passing one of the small ration boxes to Faro and the other to Vanto. Faro tore hers open eagerly, shredding the flimsi wrapper and examining the contents inside.

A thick, calorie-dense slice of bread with the consistency of a hard-packed cake. Caf in a self-heating tin. A tube of flavored nutrient slime and another tube of stims, which Faro removed from the package and tucked into her parka pocket for morning. 

She got to work immediately on the bread, knowing from experience that it was more filling than whatever entree had been included in the pack — hers looked like green bantha steak in a congealed sauce. On Thrawn’s other side, Vanto followed her lead, taking a massive bite of the bread. Still chewing, he got to his feet and unclipped the canteen from his belt.

Faro watched as he circled the tree trunk, putting one foot on the low-hanging branch and stepping up halfway out of the pit. She could hear him scraping snow from outside into his canteen — not a bad idea, now that they were down here. Faro had kept hydrated throughout the day by eating handfuls of snow whenever she got thirsty, but she couldn’t exactly harvest those handfuls from the shelter. Not if she wanted it to stay intact.

Mouth full of that flavorless, dry bread, Faro dusted her hands off and joined Vanto, taking his spot on the branch when he jumped down. She shoveled one handful of snow directly into her mouth and the rest into her canteen before climbing back down into the pit.

Thrawn, she noticed, had already heated his caf and was cupping it against his chest. The individual packages in his rations box had been picked clean during the short time Faro and Vanto were collecting water, and now his eyes were fixed on a small, colorful package he had not yet touched.

“That’s candy,” Vanto told him. 

“I see,” said Thrawn. Faro snorted, taking her seat next to him again. She’d come to suspect that Thrawn primarily said “I see,” when he did not, in fact, understand at all.

“It’s confectionary, sir,” she explained. “Dessert. Very sweet, not particularly nutritious. They’re popular with children. That one’s a Honnbar — it’s a white chocolate coating with nougat and fizzlerocks inside. They include candy mostly as a morale booster for ground troops, sir.”

“I see,” said Thrawn again. He removed one hand from his caf mug, picked the Honnbar up gingerly with two fingers, and dropped it into Faro’s rations box instead.

“I can never get him to try candy,” Vanto said conspiratorially, leaning forward so he could look at Faro around Thrawn. “You know how many times we’ve been to Coruscant and he’s never _once_ tried spice cakes?”

Faro suppressed a snort. She couldn’t exactly imagine Thrawn liking sweets, to be honest. He glanced at her briefly, his face inscrutable, as though he were measuring her reaction to Vanto’s comment. 

“I don’t much like sweets, either, sir,” Faro assured him. She tossed the Honnbar (and her own pack of ginger-flavored Freek Deeks) to Vanto, who gave her an incredulous look but accepted both gifts without argument. Thrawn leaned back against the trunk as the candy flew through the air directly in front of his face. 

“Commander Vanto is perhaps more in need of the energy boost than we are,” he said, “considering the injuries he sustained earlier in the day.”

Vanto, already munching on the Honnbar, scoffed. “Yeah, that makes sense. Give the short guy who spent the last hour _weaving a mat_ all the extra calories.”

“You will need them to heal,” Thrawn insisted.

“No offense, sir,” said Vanto with an amused twist to his lip, “but these rations are only three thousand calories, and you eat more than that per day even when you’re _not_ digging a hole two meters deep with your bare hands.”

“Perhaps,” said Thrawn begrudgingly, eyes sliding closed. “Nonetheless, _you_ are the one with a sprained wrist.”

“Actually, Vanto has a point, sir,” said Faro, keeping her smile in check. “You’re two meters tall and what, eighty-five kilos?”

“Not quite two meters,” Thrawn murmured. 

“Speaking _strictly_ in scientific terms,” Faro said, ignoring the correction, “you need to eat almost _twice_ what I do on a daily basis, sir. Factoring in the cold and the work you’ve been doing—”

“Not that there’s much we can do about it,” Vanto interjected glumly, staring at his almost-empty rations. A small smile touched Thrawn’s lips. 

“There is one thing we can do about it, Commander,” he said. 

“Sir?”

“We can stop dwelling on it,” Thrawn said, words punctuated by an almost inaudible growl from his stomach. 

Properly chastised, Faro and Vanto let the subject drop. Faro pulled back the heating strip on her entree and held it in both hands, feeling the box warm against her skin. Even after finishing the bread, she was still ravenous, and for a moment the only sounds in the shelter were the somewhat-mortifying noises she and Vanto made as they chewed. 

The whole time, Thrawn sat between them with his back straight and his eyes closed, maybe meditating, maybe just resting his eyes. His thigh pressed up against Faro’s, but he’d been right earlier when he said he was overheated and that his high temperature would eventually fade — Faro could detect no warmth at all beneath Thrawn’s snow pants, and she could feel a slight tremor moving occasionally through his thighs. 

Food finally and irrevocably gone, Faro turned to her caf, alternating sips of it with ice-cold water from her canteen. Across from her, Vanto assembled his empty wrappers and used utensils back in the rations box and closed it up, tucking it deep inside Thrawn’s rucksack. 

They both tried not to startle when Thrawn suddenly opened his eyes.

“Your comlink, Commander Vanto,” he requested, holding out one hand palm-up.

“Oh,” said Vanto. He dug inside his parka for a moment, rifling through one pocket after another. Then, abruptly, he froze and pulled the mangled remnants of a comlink out with a wince before he handed it to Thrawn.

“As I expected,” said Thrawn blandly. He turned his eyes on Faro. “And yours?”

“Dented, sir, but mostly intact,” said Faro.

“Have you attempted to contact the _Chimaera_?”

Rather than answer (because she hadn’t) Faro pulled the comlink from her pocket and allowed Thrawn to examine it. The outer shell had indeed been dented — quite badly, too — during her climb up the tree. Thrawn turned it over in his hands, looking at it from every angle, then pressed the transmit button.

The familiar sound of static was conspicuously absent.

Her comlink was broken, too.

“Unfortunate,” said Thrawn, “but not irreparable. My own comlink is still functional, though incapable of reaching the _Chimaera_ unless we manage to obtain a long-range signal booster from the safehouse. I may be able to fashion an additional comm by consolidating yours and—” He half-turned to Vanto, inclining his head. “—yours. If I have your permission.”

“Of course,” said Faro, nonplussed. To her surprise, Vanto’s immediate response was an amused scoff.

“You just want something to occupy your brain while the rest of us are asleep,” he said to Thrawn.

Even more surprised now, Faro turned on Thrawn, saying, “You’re not going to sleep, sir?” Thrawn blinked at her, but before he could open his mouth to respond, Faro believed she had connected the dots. “Ah,” she said. “Let me guess. Along with their superior reflexes and infrared vision, Chiss don’t need to sleep as much as humans do.”

“Incorrect,” said Thrawn, a bit bemused. “I have mild insomnia.”

He was already using his thumbnail to unscrew the casing on Faro’s busted comm. She shook her head, huffing out a laugh, and caught Vanto watching her with his lips curved in a smile. Catching his eye, she could almost hear what he was thinking: 

_Welcome to my life._

* * *

With nothing to occupy them after they finished their food, it wasn’t long before Faro and Vanto moved away from the petrified trunk and spread out over the woven mat. They stayed close to each other and to Thrawn — Vanto’s shoulder was pressed against Faro’s knee, and she could feel Thrawn’s boot lined up against her hip — and, with varying degrees of quickness, went to sleep.

For Faro, in that first minute where she lay still with her eyes closed, it seemed like she would never get to sleep. There were too many impeding factors: the low, clawing feeling of anxiety in her gut as she tried not to think about their situation; the coldness which, despite the insulation, still managed to seep into her bones and wrack her body with occasional shivers; the howl of the wind overhead and the soft scritching noises of metal on metal as Thrawn pieced together a functional comlink.

But no sooner had she begun to consider these factors than exhaustion set in and, just like that, she was asleep.

* * *

According to her chrono, she woke a little more than three hours later when Thrawn carefully set the repaired comlink aside and stretched out on Faro’s left side, wedging her squarely between the two men. He pulled his tunic off and folded it into a small bundle which he placed beneath his head, leaving his torso bare. On Faro’s other side, Vanto murmured in his sleep as she shifted closer to him, but he didn’t wake. 

What she could see of the sky through the red fringe overhead was still dark. She glanced over at Thrawn, caught him staring up through the fringe as well. His eyes were hooded; the strip of red beneath them seemed pale and unpronounced. 

Her gaze drifted down to the silver-toned scars on his chest and abdomen.

“You’re troubled,” Thrawn said suddenly, his voice low. Faro winced; she should’ve known he’d catch her staring. 

“Aren’t you cold, sir?” she whispered back. Thrawn’s bare arm was pressed firmly against hers, a symptom of the cramped space they were in. She couldn’t feel any warmth coming off him through her sleeve.

“Marginally,” Thrawn said. “In shelters such as this, it’s optimal for all beings inside to remove their clothing entirely in order to aid the body’s natural thermal regulation system. I determined such measures to be largely unnecessary and perhaps inappropriate here.”

Faro’s sluggish brain worked overtime to translate that comment: So if they were all naked, they’d be warmer? But they wouldn’t _die_ if they stayed clothed, so Thrawn hadn’t brought it up (thank the stars). She sneaked a glance at him again, wondering if he’d been acquiescing to Imperial fraternization standards (which only loosely applied in any survival situation and could surely be waived when it was between three high-ranking officers) or merely bowing down to his own prudishness.

Then again, _he_ was the one currently shirtless. 

“Those scars…” Faro started. She hesitated halfway through the sentence; she’d met plenty of Imperial officers who loved to brag about their scars, and plenty more who refused to talk about them at all.

“Blaster fire,” Thrawn said. He lifted an arm — the one not currently pressed up against Faro’s — and laid it over his eyes. It was a consummately familiar, strangely human gesture; Faro’s mother had taken naps like that, too, using her forearm to block out the light. “The Clone War.” Thrawn said, continuing his explanation of the scars.

 _The Clone War?_

Faro’s mind raced, going back over everything she knew about Thrawn, about his military career. He had five years of Imperial service, so far as she knew — and according to Vanto, ten years of exile before that. If that timeline was accurate, it _did_ leave Thrawn with two years when he could have theoretically joined the fight. But if he’d fought for the Republic back then, surely his military service would have carried over when he joined the Empire years later, and he would have entered the Naval ranks as something more substantial than a lieutenant.

Faro froze as the most obvious answer presented itself: Thrawn _hadn’t_ fought for the Republic. He, like so many aliens, had joined the Separatists. 

A chill went through her that had nothing to do with the wind howling overhead. 

It was possible — hell, it seemed _likely_. It would explain why Thrawn so famously encountered political opponents everywhere he went, no matter how many stupendous victories he had under his belt. If High Command knew he’d once been a Separatist, they’d do everything in their power to get rid of him. Only his close relationship with the Emperor would save him.

Keeping her voice carefully neutral, Faro said, “I didn’t know you fought in the Clone Wars, sir.”

Thrawn hummed, keeping his forearm over his eyes. “Understandable, as I did not,” he said. “My assistance was limited to one mission on the edge of the Unknown Regions in tandem with a Republic general. At the time, I would have made a poor Republic soldier.”

Faro shot him a disbelieving look at that; as if he could see it, Thrawn explained, “I was not yet fluent in Basic. Fortunately, the general and I shared a secondary fluency in Meese Caulf.”

Considering that she’d seen Thrawn ask Vanto for a translation on the bridge just yesterday, Faro suspected that “not yet fluent” really meant “did not speak a single word.” Still, the explanation went a long way toward easing her anxiety, even if it didn’t exactly tell her much.

“So,” she said, “you were hit by blaster fire? Directly?”

“Over my uniform,” Thrawn said. As if that changed anything. 

“And you _survived_?” Faro hissed. She caught sight of a faint smile on Thrawn’s lips.

“I survived,” he confirmed. “It was a very long day.”

Looking around at the soft-white walls surrounding them — and listening to the howl of the wind through the fringe — Faro couldn’t help but grin. “As long as today?” she asked.

“Difficult to compare the two,” Thrawn murmured, shifting ever so slightly. His hand brushed Faro’s for a moment, and she was pleased to note his temperature had gone up again. “Each situation had its own benefits and … disappointments. Then, we completed our joint missions successfully, but many lives were lost. Today, we have seen the loss of only one life — we have, however, failed our mission. Nonetheless, I would classify today as the better of the two.”

One life lost today — he could only mean Varren Knuss by that, assuming Knuss had indeed arrived at the buried rendezvous point prior to the avalanche. Faro frowned up at the canopy above her head; she’d worked with Thrawn long enough to know he’d rather fail a mission with no casualties than complete one with a great deal. 

“I’d rank this one as my longest day,” said Faro after a long moment of consideration. “Battles all blend into each other after a while, especially in the Clone Wars — but I can’t say I’ve ever had to test my wilderness survival skills before. Not like this.”

“I was under the impression,” said Thrawn, “that Imperial academies typically require all cadets to complete survival training.”

“They do. And that equals out to three days of guided camping in the woods and, if you’re lucky, one day of mountaineering or path-finding practice. That’s if you go to one of the swanky schools.”

“I see.”

“Things were different on your homeworld, I’m guessing?” Faro asked, turning her head to the side so she could see Thrawn’s face. 

“Markedly,” he said. 

Faro waited for him to continue; he didn’t.

“Markedly how, sir?” she asked with as much patience as she could muster. “Don’t tell me you had mandatory Surface Scouts.”

“Surface Scouts,” Thrawn repeated.

She should have known he’d jump on that instead of answering the question. “It’s a Metellean thing,” she said. “Kids who go down to the surface in troops so they can learn how to sail.”

“Hm,” said Thrawn. “You have more experience than you let on.”

“I didn’t say _I_ was a Surface Scout,” Faro corrected. 

“Perhaps not,” Thrawn said. He let his arm fall away from his face for a moment so he could study Faro’s face in the dark. She tried not to squirm under his gaze; under the soft lights of the Chimaera’s bridge, she barely noticed the color or intensity of Thrawn’s eyes. Here, in a dark shelter with no other light source to be found, it was impossible to ignore. 

“I think it likely you wished to be a Surface Scout, at the very least,” Thrawn said. “You read their manuals well enough to memorize them.”

Faro sat up on her elbows, staring down at Thrawn. For a moment, all she could see was herself as a little girl, crouched in one of the filthy mid-level tracts near the stratablocks of Metellos and poring through a scavenged Surface Scout handbook when she was supposed to be studying for school. 

“How did you know that, sir?” she asked, making sure to keep her voice modulated and calm. It wasn’t the fact that Thrawn had once again guessed a detail about her life that unnerved her — it was that he’d somehow stumbled upon one of her least consequential and simultaneously best-kept secrets. 

“You have mentioned before,” Thrawn said, “that certain Imperial aircraft do not handle much different from more primitive rafts and sailboats.”

Faro chewed the inside of her cheek; she couldn’t remember that particular conversation. Perhaps sensing this, Thrawn elaborated.

“We were pursuing pirates in the Cularin system. You brought to my attention that the pirates used evasive maneuvers similar to what a sailor might employ when faced with an obstacle on the water, indicating that some or all of the pirates originated from the water-covered moon Dorumaa.”

Now _that_ Faro could remember. She’d been right, too. The pirates steered their ships like they were seacraft, not spacecraft, and as a result they’d been simplicity itself to track and defeat. Gradually, she eased back down onto the lumpy floor, trying to forget the lingering image of herself as a small child. She’d practiced knot-tying for years in secret, she remembered now — but in Core Worlds like Metellos, it was almost blasphemous to suggest leaving the city, and she’d only broached the topic once with her mother before letting it go.

“You didn’t answer my question, sir,” she said.

Thrawn propped his forearm back over his eyes; it took Faro’s vision a moment to adjust to the sudden lack of light in the shelter.

“It is late,” Thrawn said. He paused, perhaps waiting for Faro to agree or otherwise indicate she’d drop the subject. When she didn’t, he continued in a tone so casual and mild Faro couldn’t be sure whether he’d really hesitated or not. “We are both in need of rest.”

“Certainly, sir,” said Faro. She paused, too, just to let Thrawn think for a moment that he’d won. “But I believe my exact wording was, ‘Markedly how, sir?’”

He said nothing.

“In regard to survival skills on your home planet, sir,” Faro prodded. 

She watched Thrawn’s chest rise and fall in the sort of deep, even pattern she associated with sleep. His face -- what she could see of it -- was relaxed, giving no indication that he’d heard her.

But eventually, he spoke, and his voice was so well-modulated Faro could hear almost no hint of reluctance in it.

“Markedly,” Thrawn said, “in that Chiss commoners are well-versed in wilderness survival throughout childhood, with particular emphasis on cave exploration and winter weather. Members of the Ruling Families typically complete arduous courses as part of their training, and of course the same is true for the military, which is comprised of all castes.”

“Ah,” said Faro, gaze roaming around their neatly-made shelter. In the back of her mind, she was busy filing away what little information she’d gleaned from Thrawn — that the Chiss were governed by a monarchy, in particular. “So that’s why you’re so good at this.”

“Perhaps a little better than most Chiss,” Thrawn said. “I have had extensive practical experience, after all.”

His exile. Right. Faro glanced over at Vanto’s sleeping form — she’d heard he was there when Thrawn was discovered, but he never talked about it. Maybe that instinctive tendency to protect Thrawn’s privacy was why Thrawn kept him around. 

“You’re a commoner, then, sir?” she asked, knowing quite well that she was pushing her luck.

“I am a commissioned officer of the Imperial Navy,” Thrawn said without a trace of ire or rebuke. 

Still, Faro couldn’t help but feel rebuked. It was a unique subgenre of Foot-in-Mouth Syndrome; she remembered feeling this way when she’d prodded her grandmother too much as a child and stumbled upon bad memories of life in the Moridebo District, constantly besieged by hurricanes off the Ciuray Sea.

She frowned up at the canopy overhead, tracing back through the quiet conversation she’d had with Thrawn. He was certainly more reserved than most, valued his privacy more than practically any human Faro had met, and here she was deliberately interrogating him while Vanto slept. She knew he appreciated curiosity on the bridge, knew he valued it among his crew whether they were on a specific mission or merely standing watch — still, it was impossible to say whether he appreciated that same curiosity when it was aimed at him. 

She turned to Thrawn, trying to determine whether she would be better served by an apology, by asking more questions, or by silently allowing the matter to drop. She’d never had trouble reading her commanders before Thrawn; they’d been easy to flatter when necessary, easy to please. With Thrawn, all she knew for certain was that he valued competence and a willingness to learn; the only people he respected, it seemed, were those with flexible, receptive minds and a solid work ethic; the only people he _trusted,_ on the other hand, were those he could manipulate without error.

Faro found herself grimacing at Thrawn; in an ideal world, she’d be both respected and trusted, as she and the rest of the Chimaera respected and trusted him. Unfortunately, she suspected the two were mutually exclusive in Thrawn’s mind.

Best not to apologize.

“Goodnight, sir,” she said, shelving the questions for tonight.

“Goodnight,” said Thrawn immediately. “And rest at ease. I appreciate curiosity, Commander.” He shifted his arm then, pinning Faro down with bright and fully vigilant eyes. “In all its forms,” he said. 

And what could Faro possibly say to that? She lay back without answering, turning her face away. Without thinking, she rested her forearm over her eyes, mimicking Thrawn’s posture without the slightest awareness that she was doing so.

She fell asleep that way.

* * *

Morning came slowly, bringing with it a deafening wind that whipped through the fringe over their shelter, quickly stealing the body heat they’d built up through the night. When Faro woke, Vanto was already sitting up beside her, every movement stiff as the combination of his time being battered around by the avalanche and his long night of sleeping on a lumpy, not-quite-soft floor caught up to him. 

He was lucky he was so young, Faro thought. Even _she_ was sore, and she definitely hadn’t been buried in the snow — if she had been, she probably wouldn’t be moving at all right now. Her legs protested as she pushed to her feet and her arms were so dead around the shoulders she certainly couldn’t lift them over her head. Even her abs were screaming; she’d thought at least _they_ would get the day off.

“Should’ve stretched last night,” Vanto grumbled, making a half-assed attempt to do so now. He couldn’t quite manage to flatten his arm sideways over his chest.

“Me, too,” Faro said. “Where’s—?”

“He took the heating coils in our rations boxes apart sometime last night,” Vanto said, waving one hand in a vague gesture. His eyes were still puffy and half-closed, though Faro couldn’t tell if this was from sleep or if it was swelling from the avalanche. “He’s up there melting snow into our canteens; I think so we have ready-made heating pads or something while we walk. He said we can always drink the snow if we get thirsty.”

Faro nodded — and felt her neck creak in protest at the movement. “Aw, hell,” she murmured, massaging it as best she could. The fringe was flapping wildly overhead and the cold was really starting to sink into the shelter now; she started shivering even as she leaned over to lace up her boots. 

“Kriff,” Vanto muttered, hugging himself. He scowled up at the canopy overhead. “How can he stand it?”

“Oh,” Faro said with a snort, “he’s, ah, a bit better than most Chiss at wilderness survival, you know. He underwent extensive winter survival and cave exploration courses as a child.”

Vanto threw her a bewildered look. “He told you that?”

“Last night,” Faro said, straightening up with an audible crack of her spine. “I couldn’t tell if he was being deliberately condescending about Imperial survival skills or not.”

“It’s never deliberate,” Vanto said with a small smile. “It’s just the way he talks.”

“Good to know.” Carefully, Faro secured her skull cap over her head, making sure to tuck all loose strands of hair firmly inside and away from her eyes. “Sometimes I get the feeling that if he wanted to, he could build an entire spaceship from scratch. Hyperdrive and all.”

Vanto let out a quick, aborted chuckle that immediately died; for a brief moment, he wore a far-away look Faro couldn’t interpret. “I don’t know about that one,” he said eventually, seeming to give the issue some serious thought. “He could probably build just about any weapon you can ask for, though.”

“Blasters made of petrified wood,” Faro suggested.

“Electrostaffs made out of ice,” Vanto said, grinning again. 

“The execution is simple enough, Commander,” Faro said, imitating Thrawn’s modulated voice and upright posture. “Using the strands of glass found in a nearby tree, I was able to conduct electricity along the surface of the ice using only this wire woven from the fr—”

“Commander,” Thrawn said from the top of the pit. 

“Sir,” said Faro, immediately professional again, her features settling into a stone-like mask. She couldn’t tell from Thrawn’s face whether he’d heard her — or whether he cared.

Silently, Thrawn tossed her a small, black bundle; it landed almost weightlessly in her hands and she unfolded it quickly, revealing the pair of grip-fast gloves, tucked into each other.

“We must depart soon,” Thrawn said, ducking gracefully as the wind whipped part of the tree’s fringe toward his face. “Finish your preparations and join me on the surface when ready.”

With that, he moved back out of sight, leaving Vanto and Faro to raise their eyebrows at each other. 

“I guess you’re back to being the most frostbite-prone one of us,” Vanto said, nodding at the bundle in Faro’s hands. 

“Oh, sure,” Faro snorted. She pulled the gloves on, noting again how little protection they offered. “Did you see _his_ hands last night?”

In response, Vanto only rolled his eyes. Of course, it went without saying that they would both do the same for their subordinates if they were the lead officer on a mission gone wrong. What should have been common practice among Imperial officers was sadly scarce the higher ranking one got; it hadn’t escaped Faro’s notice how lucky she was to be stationed aboard a ship with at least two other like minds.

She scrambled up the tree trunk after Vanto, emerging from beneath the fringe to find Thrawn standing nearby with his rucksack on his back and his arms crossed over his chest. His feet were firmly planted in the snow, his back straight, his chin held high as he surveyed the white landscape before them — but the wind buffeted his hair back from his face with inordinate strength, and she could tell he was suppressing a shiver. 

He looked over his shoulder at Faro and Vanto as they crunched toward him across the snow. 

“You have your blasters?” he checked. Faro blinked and could see Vanto recalibrating as he processed the question.

“Yes,” they said simultaneously. Thrawn inclined his head, eyes swiveling back to the landscape.

“Good,” he said. “Keep them in reach.”

Before either of them could transform their surprise into a question, Thrawn set off southeast toward the safehouse. Faro and Vanto looked at each other, eyebrows raised. Then, silently, Faro moved her blaster to her outside parka pocket, where she could grab it with ease. Vanto mirrored her, his face troubled. Both weapons were slightly more than halfway charged, thanks to Faro’s branch-cutting mission the day before; she caught Vanto checking his charge at the exact same moment she remembered her own suboptimal level.

“Let’s go,” Faro said.

* * *

The snow was so thick and the wind so harsh against their faces that it took them a little over two hours to plod their way through two kilometers. Here, closer to the edge of the woods, the snow drifts were smaller and less apt to suck someone down beneath them; at one point, Faro put her foot down and felt the almost startling solidity of real ground beneath her boot. The avalanche hadn’t reached this far. 

There were other clues, too, of course — more noticeable clues than the thickness of the snow. Fluffy avians nestled in the trees around them, cooing softly at each other, their red feathers blending into the fringe. Small animal tracks criss-crossed through the snow, and she could tell from the studious way Thrawn frowned at them that he was calculating the rough size and body mass of each animal, no doubt plotting a million different ways to trap them for food.

There had been no sign of animal life closer to the mountain; either they’d fled the avalanche like Faro, Vanto, and Thrawn had, or they’d been buried in the snow. Either way, it was startling now to see so much evidence of life around them; Faro realized she’d been thinking of the planet as devoid of _all_ living creatures, not just humans.

Abruptly, Thrawn stopped; one hand went up, gesturing for Faro and Vanto to follow his lead. The other hand was at his shoulder, methodically loosening the straps on his rucksack.

A moment later, Faro found out why he’d insisted they keep their blasters close at hand. 

The beasts dropped out of the sky and hit the ground in front of Thrawn with a massive _thud_ of impact and a spray of snow testifying to their sheer size and weight. The first glimpse Faro got of them told her only that their fur was red like the trees and the birds she’d seen perched among the branches; any other meaningful observation she might have made was lost.

Her instincts took over. She dove to the side, landing just behind a massive tree in a bank of snow. She went for her blaster, nearly fumbled it, kept it in her hand thanks partially to the grip-fast pads on her fingers and partially to her own rusty battle reflexes. Across the way, she could see Vanto digging in the snow with both hands while his hard, cold eyes remained on the beasts and Thrawn; he’d lost his blaster in his attempt to get away, but his instincts were solid. He wouldn’t allow their new enemy to catch him off-guard. 

And Thrawn—

Thrawn was caught right in the middle of the three beasts, all chance for cover cut off from him. The animals circled him from a distance too close for comfort, their massive paws somehow padding weightlessly across the surface of the snow. One lunged, its jaws snapping, and Thrawn spun away from it as best he could, using the momentum of his spin to launch his loosened rucksack off his shoulder. He caught the strap in his free hand and brought the rucksack and all its contents swinging across the beast’s nose. 

Its head snapped back from the impact and it retreated with a whimper and a snarl as Thrawn bounced on his heels, regaining his balance and waiting for the next blow. The beasts followed each other nose-to-tail, forming a circle so tight Faro could barely make out Thrawn in the middle of them.

But there was one _very_ bright silver lining to this.

They were so close to each other that when Faro shot, there was no possible way she could hit Thrawn by mistake. Her first shot sizzled right into one of the beasts’ shoulders and it yowled, stumbling northward and out of the circle. Simultaneously, Vanto’s hands sprang out of the snow with his blaster clutched tightly between them; his first shot peeled off the ground, arrowing right underneath one of the beasts’ paws as it took a step. It missed Thrawn’s leg by an inch; he took advantage of the gap in the circle as the first beast fell, dodging a swipe from one and dancing around the injured one. 

Only now could Faro hear Thrawn’s blaster going off; he dispatched the injured beast while Faro centered all her fire on the first and Vanto, aiming carefully, attempted to take out the second.

He managed it in only two hits. The first shot hit the beast in its ribs, making it flinch — and in doing so, it turned its head to face Vanto, presenting him with the perfect opportunity to land the next shot right between its eyes.

His targeted beast fell right in the path of Faro’s blaster, blocking any shots she could take at the final, living animal. She saw Vanto adjusting his aim as he realized she couldn’t take a shot; simultaneously, Thrawn spun away from the downed beast, his blaster up, the final predator bearing down on him at a rapid pace. 

Its massive front paws slammed right into Thrawn’s chest — Faro saw him fly backward from the impact, his left leg trapped under the beast, his head colliding with a petrified tree trunk. His blaster hand flew up, maybe on purpose, maybe out of his control, and a single shot fired straight up into the fringe.

 _Wasted_ , Faro thought, aligning the barrel of her blaster as her heart pounded and her hands grew damp beneath the gloves. The two downed beasts were more in her way now than ever; she could see Vanto creeping around his cover, angling for a better shot while the beast was distracted. Thrawn was down, making no attempt to bring his blaster back up to face the wild animal looming over him; his charge might be spent, he might be unconscious, he might just be too dazed to act.

One heartbeat.

Without stopping to think, Faro stepped out from cover and raised her blaster, leaving herself exposed. Her finger tightened on the trigger. Her charge was so low now she couldn’t afford to miss, but at this angle, she couldn’t possibly land a killing shot.

Two heartbeats.

And then—

And then the fringe of the tree above Thrawn seemed to explode. The little red birds Faro had noticed earlier took flight, disturbed by the trajectory of Thrawn’s blaster shot through their shelter. Taking advantage of the sudden noise of fluttering wings and squawking avians, Faro started to move soundlessly away from her tree, thinking only of aligning her shot, of taking out the beast.

It took her a moment to realize the beast was no longer threatening Thrawn at all.

The birds, Faro saw, hadn’t flown away at all. They had launched themselves off the tree and gathered in a mighty red flock and now—

Three heartbeats.

—Now all of them, dozens of them, maybe _hundreds_ of them, were attacking the beast. Claws as small and sharp as a needle dug into its hide; even more lethally-honed beaks pecked at its eyes and snout with arrow-like precision. In less than ten seconds, the birds had covered the beast so thoroughly Faro could no longer make out its shape underneath them. 

It stumbled blindly away from Thrawn, letting out choked, gurgling howls with every step. Faro and Vanto moved away from their respective covers slowly, eyes locked on the beast as it weaved back and forth across the snow, each step unsteady, every movement accompanied by one of those mournful wails.

It lost its footing five meters away at the same time Thrawn forced himself into a sitting position, his parka torn and turning red. Even as Vanto rushed to his side, he kept his eyes on the dying beast. His eyes were unreadable; his jaw was tight. 

Deep in the trees, the howling stopped. Faro circled the dead beasts lying in the snow nearby, forcing herself not to look at the admiral and keeping her blaster trained on their muzzles as she pressed the toe of her boot into their still-sizzling wounds. When they didn’t move — not even a flinch — she stowed her blaster and turned at last to Thrawn. 

She’d been dreading this part. In the back of her head, even though she’d seen him move, seen the clarity and intelligence in his eyes a moment before, some part of her was screaming, _He’s dead_. Her instincts and her combat experience combined together to make her illogically certain of it. She’d seen the size of the beast and the force with which it hit Thrawn when it pounced; she’d seen its claws shredding through his parka at his chest, seen the way his head bounced off the petrified trunk as he fell, seen the beast’s crushing weight on his ribs, its claws digging further into his chest.

But she forced herself to look. Forced herself to confirm that despite everything, she was wrong.

Vanto was crouched at Thrawn’s side, his face creased with carefully-moderated concern, his hair in disarray almost as badly as Thrawn’s was. The first thing Faro registered was Thrawn’s open, moving eyes — _alive,_ she told herself firmly. The next thing she noticed was the blood on his parka, the blood she’d noticed before and incorrectly filed as proof that Thrawn was dead.

The third thing she saw was that same blood coating Vanto’s hands.

“Move,” Faro said, forcing her trembling legs to carry her through the snow. She fell to her knees on Thrawn’s other side, trying to hide the fact that she’d more collapsed than decided to kneel. Vanto didn’t budge, keeping his hands on Thrawn’s chest almost possessively, and Faro was forced to grab his wrists and move him aside so she could see.

“Are you injured?” Thrawn asked her nonsensically, his voice steady. Vanto barked out a shaky laugh that was clearly filled with more rage than humor. When Thrawn turned his head to look at him, Vanto made an attempt to wipe his face blank — it was more like a scowl — and sunk his bloody hands into the snow to clean them. 

Faro ignored it all the way she always had when tending to injured comrades. She peeled back the torn and blood-soaked strips of his parka gently, revealing the wounds underneath. Thrawn made no attempt to assist her; his left hand was pressed firmly against his ribs and his right still held the blaster, trained on the dark trees where the injured beast had disappeared. 

Beneath the deep, jagged lacerations across his collar bones and pectoral muscles, Thrawn’s chest was rising and falling in deep but rapid breaths. There were three cuts Faro could immediately identify as needing stitches; the rest, ranging from shallow cuts to small gouges, could be dealt with by bacta alone.

If they _had_ any bacta, that is. As if he were reading her mind, Vanto stood and hurried through the snow to the spot three meters away where Thrawn’s rucksack lay abandoned on the ground. He brushed the snow off it as he rushed back, already digging through it.

At Thrawn’s side, he abandoned his effort almost instantly, dumping the contents on the ground. Faro glanced over, watching as Vanto dug through the scant debris only to confirm what they both suspected.

No medkit. 

Faro swallowed the surge of helpless anger that swept through her, forcing herself to stay calm. She moved her hands up to the open collar of Thrawn’s jacket, gently moving it down his shoulders on either side. He shifted his back away from the tree to help her, allowing her to drag the parka down and off his arms, leaving him in nothing but his shredded tunic.

Faro folded the parka quickly and pressed the clean side — if it could be said to _have_ a clean side — against Thrawn’s chest. He moved his left hand away from his ribs and held the parka in place, applying what Faro judged to be the right amount of pressure.

His right hand remained on the blaster. His eyes remained on the woods. 

“What about your ribs, sir?” Faro asked. She was pleased to hear the crisp professionalism of her own voice.

“Bruised,” said Thrawn absently. “Not broken.”

“And your leg?”

Thrawn shifted slightly, not looking down at his injured leg. “Shallow wound,” he said. Doubtfully, Faro examined his snow pants; they weren’t torn, made of sturdier material than the parka, and they were so thick it was impossible to tell whether Thrawn was bleeding underneath.

“How far are we from the safehouse?” asked Vanto suddenly. His breath was visible in the cold air; Faro looked questioningly at Thrawn, who finally looked away from the trees and set his blaster aside.

“Two point five kilometers,” he said. He glanced up, squinting through the red fringe of the tree to the sky. Dark clouds covered the sun, making it impossible — at least for Faro — to tell how close they were to noon and the predicted blizzard. 

Vanto followed Thrawn’s gaze to the sky, chewing his lip. He sneaked a glance at Faro and she could tell he was silently asking her something, but she couldn’t tell what.

Before she could decipher it, Thrawn leaned forward and put his left hand on Faro’s shoulder, the other hand once more grabbing his blaster. By instinct, she ducked, thinking the injured beast — or worse, a pack of hungry and unwounded friends — had returned; as a result, Thrawn lost his balance and sat back heavily against the tree, keeping the muzzle of his blaster pointed away from both commanders as he fell.

Belatedly, Faro realized he’d been using her for support as he stood. “Sorry, sir,” she said, cheeks flaring. Though he could have _asked_ first. She and Vanto both leaned forward to help, with Thrawn grasping Vanto by the arm and Faro by the shoulder. He stood with little difficulty and moved away from them with every ounce of his usual grace and dignity intact, despite the assistance getting up. 

His eyes scanned the fringes of the trees around them; after a moment, he holstered his blaster and pointed at a tree nearby.

“That,” he said, indicating a peculiar — and enormous — knot high up in the fringe, “is where our attackers charged from. You will see similar nests in a smaller size in every tree nearby; the avians use the same nest-building method on a smaller scale.”

Silently, he pointed out three such nests in the trees around them, so small Faro could have missed them. So small she _had_ missed them, she reminded herself.

“You will notice no small-animal prints in the vicinity around these nests,” Thrawn said grimly. He swept one hand through his disheveled hair and shouldered his rucksack again, not even wincing as the strap brushed a wound high up on his collar bone. He kept the folded parka pressed against his chest. The wind wailed around him, cutting through his thin tunic. “I suspect they can smell their predators better than we can.”

With that, he visibly braced himself and set off southeast again, resuming their vector from earlier. Faro and Vanto flanked him by silent agreement, each of them watching out of the corner of their eye in case Thrawn stumbled. 

He didn’t stumble. For the next two kilometers, as the sky grew darker and the wind picked up, Thrawn showed no evidence of pain or exhaustion, though he was wracked by shivers as much as Vanto and Faro were. His eyes stayed clear, roaming from the snowy land ahead of them to the nests in the fringe overhead. At no point did his posture sag — though this, Faro suspected, could be due more to the pain in his ribs than anything else — and he walked through the snow with apparent ease. 

One hour later, the clouds broke open and it started to snow. The flakes at first were fluffy and soft; Faro could feel them clinging to her lips, could see them getting caught in Thrawn’s and Vanto’s dark hair. Thrawn quickened his pace silently, driving forward through the wind.

Soon, the snowflakes weren’t nearly so soft. They seemed to crystallize less than thirty minutes later, turning each flake into a weapon hurtled into Faro’s unprotected face by the wind. Across from her, Vanto ducked his head and pulled his parka over his face, walking hunched over and half-blind. Faro placed both gloved hands over her own face, squinting through the gaps in her fingers.

The wind cut through the thin gloves like they weren’t there. She could feel her fingers going numb, but if she tucked them into her parka to warm them up, her face would be left unprotected. It was a lose-lose situation; she could only grit her teeth and endure. 

Slowly, but unmistakably, Thrawn pulled ahead of both his subordinates, pushing through the wind to the very edge of the petrified forest. He ducked behind a tree and peered around the trunk, stealing a glimpse at what lay ahead. When Faro reached him, she crowded close behind his back, using him as shelter as much as he was using the tree; a moment later, Vanto stumbled up against her side, doing the same.

“There,” said Thrawn, voice ragged. Faro followed his pointing finger, squinting through the wind and cutting snow.

There was a little village up ahead, each building coated in white. 

They’d reached the safehouse at last. 

* * *

“Fuck,” Vanto said. The word was almost inaudible, swallowed up by a simultaneous clang as he dropped the wrench. Across the room, Faro knelt at the side of a dusty futon close to an even dustier window; she looked away from Thrawn’s wounds for a moment, glancing over her shoulder just in time to see Vanto kick the generator.

He looked back at her, no doubt checking to see if either she or Thrawn had heard him, and happened to catch her eyes. His expression morphed instantly from irritation and exhaustion to a sort of puppy-dog apology Faro couldn’t resist smiling at.

“Sorry,” he said.

“I’ve heard worse,” Faro said. She turned back to Thrawn; he’d shrugged out of his tunic shortly after they’d stumbled into the safehouse and ascertained that the generator wasn’t working. It lay on the floor nearby, tossed carelessly over the crumpled and blood-stained parka.

Vanto would have the generator working in short order, Faro knew — and if he didn’t, either she’d take a look at it or Thrawn would. For now, she turned her concentration to the old and mostly expired medkit lying open on the futon. The bacta patches had allegedly expired last year, according to the date stamped on each packet, but it wasn’t like Faro had much other choice. She’d already handled the largest wounds on Thrawn’s chest, using the autozips from the kit; now she peeled open one of the bacta patches and looked over his wounds again.

Thrawn, for his part, wasn’t paying Faro any mind at all. His eyes were narrowed and glued to Vanto’s back.

“I’m unfamiliar with that term,” he said. Faro heard Vanto swear again under his breath, though she couldn’t be sure who he was swearing at: the generator or Thrawn.

“Don’t worry about it, sir,” she said. She placed one hand on Thrawn’s bare shoulder, bracing him, and used the other to gently press the bacta patch in place over a gash on his collar bone. This, at least, seemed to distract him from the shiny new swear word Vanto had dangled in front of his face; he leaned his head back and looked down his nose at an awkward angle so he could watch the bacta swirl over his skin beneath the plastic barrier.

“Intriguing,” he said.

Faro leaned back on her heels to drop the bacta patch’s packaging in an empty trash bin nearby. “What’s intriguing, sir?” she asked absently, already searching through the medkit for another patch. 

Thrawn shifted all his weight onto one elbow, using his free hand to touch the patch on his collar bone. This put his arm directly in Faro’s way as she tried to apply the second patch.

“I was informed bacta had pain-relieving qualities,” Thrawn said. “I was unaware of the exact strength.”

Maneuvering around his arm, Faro managed to stick the next patch onto two closely-spaced wounds. When she pulled back, she looked at Thrawn, eyebrows furrowed.

“You’ve never had bacta before, sir?”

Across the room, Vanto scoffed. He pretended not to notice when both Faro and Thrawn looked his way; instead, he kept his eyes trained on the generator, which thumped and whirred to life a moment later.

“Well done, Commander Vanto,” said Thrawn; the lights kicked on a moment later, with soft glows flaring up at strategic spots all over the house. It reminded Faro strongly of lantern festivals she’d been to as a child, though she’d certainly never been in a domestic residence decorated this way before. 

Knees audibly creaking, Vanto stood up and backed away from the generator, swinging his arms across his chest to pump warmth back into them. He looked around at the lights for a moment before his gaze rested on Thrawn.

“He’s had a few opportunities to use bacta before,” he told Faro, his tone impossible to read. “He’s always refused it.”

Thrawn inclined his head, not arguing this point. Faro glanced at him, eyeing the old blaster scars on his chest and the new wounds now either stitched together or covered up; she was still wondering when and why he’d turned down bacta when a series of vents opened around the room and the heating system shuddered on.

Vanto stepped up next to her, his hands in his pockets now, his eyes darting from one heating vent to the next. Thrawn settled back on the futon; the subtle shivers which had been traveling up and down his body for the past half hour seemed to subside as warm air blasted into the room. Outside, the wind howled fiercer than before, whistling past the far-off trees and jangling against the sides of the safehouse. Simultaneously, the three of them looked out the window.

The sky was black. The forest was invisible, covered by a swirling wall of sleet and ice. White flashes of lightning ripped through the darkness, illuminating only the snow.

“Good timing, Vanto,” Faro said, nodding toward the generator in the corner of the room.

The blizzard had arrived.

* * *

Thrawn had removed his snow pants and dressed the wound on his leg by the time Faro returned from a more in-depth exploration of the safehouse. She caught sight of his bare legs as she re-entered the small den and averted her eyes on instinct, giving him time to pull an old army blanket over his lap. Vanto sat at a small table nearby, seemingly unaware of the entire interaction as he picked through a box of old datacards.

“There are some old clothes in the bedrooms at the back of the house,” Faro reported. She had a bundle of said clothes folded in her arms and, after a moment’s consideration, brought them to Vanto rather than to Thrawn. She let them fall in a semi-neat stack on the table as Vanto swept the datacards out of her way.

If Thrawn felt slighted in any way by this minor decision, he didn’t show it; he’d already lost interest in the fresh/old clothes and had turned back to the broken comlink he was tinkering with the night before. The functional one lay on the futon at his side, a white light blinking ponderously on and off as it struggled to connect with the _Chimaera_ through the gathering storm.

“There’s food in the kitchen as well,” Vanto said to Faro, already shifting his concentration from the datacards to the pile of clothes. “Mostly dehydrated stuff, some tinned goods. And there’s a sonic laundry, so we can at least wash our snow gear and uniforms.”

“Hm,” Faro said. She reached for the box of datacards and Vanto absently slid it her way across the table.

“Good selection of sizes,” he commented, still picking through the clothes. “Think they were left here by the original owners?”

Faro could only shrug. The clothes she’d found ranged from XS to XXL and were all of the same bland, functional style, which indicated they’d been gathered deliberately as a comprehensive stock for unknown future visitors. But they weren’t the type of clothes the Empire typically provided for its soldiers; there were faded graphics on some of the shirts, patches on well-worn jackets, mended trousers and unfashionable patterned tunics from at least a decade before. The sort of clothes a real family might leave behind if they were moving.

She thumbed through the datacards, pushing the clothes out of her mind even as Vanto held up an XL sweater with a solar-powered graphic display reading I <3 Coruscant, the words spelled out by tiny, long-dead lights. 

The datacards were more useful than the clothes she’d found — most of them were local maps and registers, guides to flora and fauna, manuals and how-to guides covering the safehouse’s equipment, with full instructions for repairs. A few beat-up cards contained collections of best-selling novels and popular holofilms from years before.

All useless, Faro noted sourly, without a functional datapad. So far, she hadn’t managed to turn up a single one of those, nor any sort of long-range signal booster. 

Across from her, Vanto rifled through the pile of clothes again, this time extracting a rather plain (if a bit lymoth-eaten) burgundy sweater and a pair of loose trousers meant for exercise and lounging. His chair scraped back from the table as he stood, bringing both articles over to Thrawn.

“Here you are, sir,” he said. Thrawn accepted them with a nod of thanks, setting the broken comlink aside. Though she was fairly certain he wasn’t _entirely_ naked under there, Faro looked away again when Thrawn swept his blanket away, and she noticed Vanto turning away as well.

It was funny, she thought, how Imperial officers pretended to be shy about nudity to each other. The higher one’s rank, the more one pretended to care. 

After a long moment of silence, she caught Vanto moving out of the corner of her eye and took that as her cue that it was safe to look back. Thrawn was just pulling the sweater over his head, but couldn’t maneuver his right arm — the one closest to the wounds which criss-crossed his chest, collar bone, and shoulder — through the proper hole. Vanto helped him silently and with marked carelessness for the sweater itself; rather than force Thrawn into a painful position, he simply stretched the sweater until it could be pulled on with ease. 

Faro watched with amusement (and just a touch of concern) as Thrawn adjusted the sweater; it was far too large for him and so old it didn’t have a sealing strip, leaving him practically swimming it. 

“Thank you, Commander,” said Thrawn mildly, apparently unembarrassed by the help. He examined the material of the sweater for a moment, rubbing it between his fingers. “I’m fond of this color.”

“Yes, sir,” said Vanto in a mildly exasperated tone which Faro suspected really meant, _I know._

If she were being honest with herself, she rather liked the color, too. She’d never seen Thrawn in anything other than the drab color of his Imperial uniform; she watched for a moment as he fiddled with the old-fashioned quarter-zip collar before deciding to leave it up.

She didn’t blame him — when it was folded up like that, you couldn’t see the bacta patches edging onto his neck. Plus, it almost resembled the high collar of a military uniform that way.

Vanto gathered Thrawn’s discarded uniform items off the floor and brought them with him to an alcove off the side of the kitchen, where the sonic laundry was tucked behind a discreet door. He slid them all through the receptor — even the shredded parka — and returned to the kitchen, where he leaned against the counter for a moment, clearly deep in thought. 

“So,” said Faro, “what kind of dehydrated food _is_ there, exactly?”

“Oh,” said Vanto, “you’re gonna _love_ this.”

* * *

Metellean curry just wasn’t _meant_ to be dehydrated — Faro had finished her bowl over an hour ago and she could still feel a powdery residue sticking to her teeth. Even more tragic than the clumpy texture of the curry (seriously, it was like eating wet dust) was the complete and total lack of spiciness. 

“That was more bland than ration bars,” Faro said. Vanto hummed his agreement; he was still picking at his own sad-looking bowl, the contents of which had long since congealed. Thrawn sat at the third chair now, his eyes fixed to the broken datapad; he hadn’t eaten yet and looked distinctly uncomfortable, clearly favoring his left side — the one with the bruised ribs. 

As Faro watched, he connected the datapad to an external charge port and flicked it on; the display flickered, LED lights clearly visible through the cracked screen. The image on the display was hopelessly scrambled; nonetheless, Thrawn carefully examined the box of datacards before plucking one out and inserting it into the datapad. 

Faro rather expected nothing to happen.

She was right. The screen remained mostly blank, showing nothing but a series of unreadable, stagnant pink lines where the databank icons should be. After a moment, Thrawn’s already weary posture deflated a little more and he ejected the card, setting the broken datapad down with a sigh. He pulled the working comlink from his pocket, turned it off and back on again, stared at the blinking, useless signal light with an unreadable expression on his face.

“Commander Faro,” he said finally, voice even, “did you happen to see any artwork in your search of the house?”

She certainly hadn’t been paying attention to _that_. Faro chewed her lip, mentally walking back through the rooms. “Might have been some paintings in the bedrooms, sir,” she said. “I did find a linen closet and the master refresher—”

Thrawn was already pushing back from the table, moving gingerly but determinedly. 

“You’re injured, sir,” said Vanto, eyebrows raised. “Can’t the paintings wait till later?”

Thrawn didn’t even dignify that with a response, forcing both Faro and Vanto to follow him if they wanted to continue the conversation.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, sir,” said Vanto patiently as he scrambled to his feet, “but this _is_ an Imperial safehouse, isn’t it?”

Thrawn did not correct him. Faro fell in step behind him, automatically assuming the professional gait and posture she utilized on the bridge. For a moment, she felt like the three of them were strolling to the viewport in the middle of a battle, rather than exploring an abandoned house in what basically amounted to their pajamas.

“What is there to gain from studying the artwork of an Imperial agent?” Vanto pressed. Thrawn slowed as he came to the first door in the hallway; he cracked it open and peered inside, scanning the walls a moment before he spotted what he was looking for. Suddenly, he didn’t seem weary at all; he walked into the room with his head held high, visibly energized.

There were two paintings here, both of them cheap reproductions of more famous works. One of them had fallen off its hook and lay on the floor below. Faro had seen both of them before plenty of times, but couldn’t name them or even guess at the artists. The look Thrawn gave them was cursory, but there was obvious interest in his eyes. Gradually, after examining each painting in brief, he turned to two other, smaller frames close to a cheaply-made wardrobe in the corner.

These, Faro noticed, weren’t paintings. One featured a collection of pinned lymoths, their wings still fluffy and clean-looking beneath the dusty glass. The other appeared to be nothing more than dried wildflowers which someone had arranged, perhaps a little clumsily, over a backdrop of sheet music.

“Exquisite,” said Thrawn, clearly delighted.

“So you’re just bored,” Vanto said sourly. “I thought so. I _knew_ you were just bored.”

Faro waited for Thrawn to reply; when he didn’t — already examining the wildflowers and lymoths with deep concentration — she turned to survey the bedroom again, taking in details she hadn’t noticed earlier. 

The mattress on the bed was certainly old and covered in dust, but it appeared completely unused, as though it had been removed fresh from its packaging five years ago and left here immediately afterward with no one to sleep on it. It was unmistakably thin and cheap, as well, the kind of mattress used to stock Imperial barracks all over the galaxy. 

What sparse furniture remained in the room had either been left behind by whoever lived here before — the wardrobe, for instance, which had clearly been functional and adequately-made when it was new, but was now so ancient and decrepit that few people would choose to take it with them in a hasty move — while other items appeared to have been placed there by a singularly unimaginative supply officer. When this wasn’t obvious purely based on the unused appearance of the furniture, it was made more than clear by the mismatched color scheme.

Vanto seemed to be having similar thoughts; he roamed the room quietly, running his hand over items seemingly at random. Faro watched him touch a quilt folded in the corner, then a stack of old-fashioned books on a nearby desk, then the surface of the desk itself and the chair pulled up next to it. His forehead was creased, his lips pulled into a distinctive frown.

It was only when he stopped and stared down at his own dusty palm that Faro got it.

“Someone’s been here recently,” she said. “Someone other than us.”

Vanto nodded, his eyes far away in thought. Thrawn did not look away from the wildflowers, but he inclined his head and said, “Very good, Commander Faro.”

So she’d been the last to notice. Great. 

“The dust is thick on these books,” Vanto said, examining them absently, “but very thin, almost nonexistent, on the desk, the chair, and the quilt.”

Although, Faro noted, if someone _had_ been sleeping here, they’d taken care to hide that fact. The mattress was bare, with no cover, no sheets, no blankets or pillows atop it — and absolutely no creases on the mattress itself to indicate anyone had so much as sat on it.

“They slept on the floor?” she asked, eyebrows furrowed. “Why? So no one would know they were here?”

“Perhaps,” said Thrawn. His eyes had shifted, Faro noticed, from the wildflowers to the pinned lymoths. “Note the arrangement of the desk and chair.”

Both Faro and Vanto turned to look at the two. The chair had been pulled alongside the desk, not pushed into the space designed for it, and sat two feet back from the desk itself. Faro’s gaze tracked up to the shelves overhead, trying to see why someone might have moved the chair there, what they were trying to reach — but the shelves were bare, and when she stepped closer and stood on her tiptoes, she could see they were thick with dust. 

So nothing had been _removed_ , either. Meaning her first hypothesis — that the chair had been moved so their mysterious predecessor could stand on it and grab something off the shelf — was incorrect, but why else would they—

She whipped her head around to look at Thrawn so quickly it hurt her already-sore neck. 

“He’s an alien,” she said. “Too big for the bed, too tall for the desk. He had to pull his chair around to the side to sit comfortably.”

“Of course,” said Vanto behind her, his voice soft and thoughtful. “And that explains the scuffs on each door frame.”

Faro blinked, quickly sneaking a look at the door to the bedroom. There were faint marks on each side of the frame a few inches higher than Faro’s head; she hadn’t noticed them coming in, but now she could see what seemed like two dark, oily stains. 

“Yes,” said Thrawn. “A water-resistant coat freshly applied to his outerwear, I believe. It hadn’t yet dried when he searched the safehouse; likely, he was unfamiliar with this area and attended his snow gear in the morning before he left camp, not realizing how close he was to shelter. In which case, I believe he hiked in through the south, not from the north as we did.”

Faro saw Vanto open his mouth, ready to ask how Thrawn knew, and close it again as he belatedly figured it out. She went through a similar process, though she’d been slower to ask questions and quicker, perhaps, to understand. The roofs of the safehouses were sloped to avoid breakage under heavy snows; from the south, one couldn’t see the rows of tiny domiciles until one stumbled right over them. 

“I believe those marks came from his shoulders or upper arms,” Thrawn continued, gesturing to the doorway. 

If that was true, their unknown visitor would be scarcely any taller than Thrawn — which couldn’t be right, not if he was too big to use the bed. He must have been stooping to get through the doorway, Faro decided — and if those marks were from his shoulders, and if he were humanoid, she could estimate a height of roughly 2.5 meters. Not exactly a giant, perhaps, but certainly much taller than anyone here.

Of course, those were a hell of a lot of assumptions strung together. How the hell did Thrawn do this? How could he possibly pluck the right conclusion out of such a confused sea of conflicting theories and ambiguous clues? Faro was strongly tempted, not for the first time, to write it off as a mixture of insane confidence and even more insane good luck. 

The only reason she didn’t, really, was because she’d seen for herself how Thrawn reacted when his deductions turned out wrong. She’d seen the way he silently reviewed events, searching for the exact place where he’d made the wrong step, listening all the while to suggestions and theories from people around him, no matter what their rank or qualifications. She’d seen him work through the problem until he could fix it, devoting every ounce of his concentration to the problem.

People didn’t learn from their mistakes when they were skating by on confidence and good luck.

“When do you suppose he left?” asked Vanto, his fingers trailing over the scuff marks.

“Difficult to say,” said Thrawn. Deftly, he plucked the pinned lymoths off the wall and turned the frame over, inspecting it — but inspecting it for _what_ , Faro couldn’t tell. She watched as he unscrewed and gingerly removed the backing, holding the little wooden cut out to the side; it seemed like an automatic, thoughtless gesture — a silent _Here, take this_ — and Faro responded in kind, taking it without hesitation and obediently holding onto it while Thrawn peered closer at the moths.

Silently, she stepped closer to Thrawn until her shoulder was brushing his so she could see the moths, too. Vanto joined them momentarily, crowding in on Thrawn’s other side, his eyebrows furrowed.

“What do you see?” Thrawn asked.

It was impossible to tell who he was asking.

“Invasive species?” Vanto guessed. “There’s no way moths could survive here with how cold it is. These ones could’ve been brought here by the alien, then, and if he bothered to bring decor then he must have been here a long time, not just seeking shelter from the elements.”

Thrawn said nothing to that; Faro glanced at him, trying to read from his face whether Vanto was right or wrong — then her eyes trailed down to the burgundy collar brushing Thrawn’s jawline and she found the answer on her own.

“Invasive or not, it doesn’t tell us much about the alien and his homeworld,” she said. “There are moths on this planet, probably taking shelter in the safehouses. Maybe they were introduced from another climate, but they’ve adapted pretty well.”

Vanto turned a confused look on her, but in doing so he caught sight of the damage to Thrawn’s moth-eaten sweater, and Faro knew she wouldn’t have to spell anything out for him.

“Very good, Commanders,” Thrawn said. Faro saw Vanto’s face light up; she was embarrassingly sure her own face was doing the same, at least a little. “But it is perhaps more complex than that.”

Of course it was. Faro and Vanto shared an exasperated look which was cut short when Thrawn gestured for the wooden backing to the frame. Faro laid it in his open palm and watched, slightly perplexed, as he fixed it into place and hung the lymoths back on the wall.

“More complex, sir?” Vanto prodded. 

“Think on it further,” Thrawn said, straightening the frame. “Both of you.”

He moved on to the dried wildflowers next, once more removing the backing to peer inside. So far as Faro could tell, he was paying equal attention to the flowers and the old sheets of flimsi they were pasted to. This time, he didn’t prompt Faro and Vanto for their thoughts before putting the wildflowers back in place. 

With one final glance around the bedroom — taking in once more the two reproductions — Thrawn nodded to himself and left. He checked the remaining bedrooms in the hall quickly, with Faro and Thrawn trailing behind him. There was no artwork left to be seen. 

Saying nothing, and giving away nothing at all in his face, Thrawn led them back to the den.

Lightning was raging worse than ever outside the windows, so bright and so close it appeared to Faro like the petrified forest had caught fire. She gravitated toward the window while Thrawn and Eli took seats at the spindly kitchen table; she had to kneel on Thrawn’s cot to see through the glass, and what she saw wasn’t exactly comforting.

Between the snow and the lightning, she suspected they’d be here a long, long time.

Grimacing, Faro pushed herself away from the window and forced it out of her mind — as best she could when every few seconds the crack of lightning or the boom of thunder filled the room. She circled back toward the kitchen, noticing for the first time what Thrawn had in his hand.

From somewhere in the safehouse, he’d managed to procure a pad of flimsi and a few old-fashioned charcoal pencils, all of them unsharpened. Faro dug in her pocket for her knife and handed it to him without being asked, receiving a nod of thanks in return; she took a seat while Thrawn whittled one of the pencils to a functional point.

“Drawing, sir?” Vanto asked. Faro couldn’t tell if he was being wry on purpose or if it was a genuine question that came out just a little bit wry by mistake.

“Organizing,” Thrawn corrected, his voice quiet and toneless. “Do you still have the datacard I gave you prior to leaving the shuttle?”

Faro knew he was talking to Vanto, but she still felt a jolt of temporary anxiety at his question, like she’d been entrusted with a datacard and lost it in the snow. Silently, Vanto removed the datacard from his pocket and held it up for Thrawn to see.

Thrawn’s eyes flickered up briefly from the charcoal pencil he was sharpening; he nodded more to the pencil than to Vanto. 

“Pretty useless now, if you ask me,” Vanto said.

“Yes,” Thrawn agreed. “Try it nonetheless.”

Vanto did, inserting the card into the datapad, which stayed cracked and dead. He fiddled with the buttons on the side for a moment in a futile effort to bring the screen back to life, then ejected the card with a shrug. “Nothing, sir.”

Carefully, Thrawn laid Faro’s knife down on the table and checked all three charcoal pencils against the flimsi pad, leaving thin, dark lines at the top of the page. 

“What’s on the datacard?” Faro asked, looking between Thrawn and Vanto, eyes narrowed. She couldn’t help but notice _she_ hadn’t been given a secret datacard to keep safe on the journey here.

“Comprehensive reports on this planet and the surrounding system,” Thrawn said. He indicated the scuffed-up, saggy box of old datacards at the end of the table. “Not much different from what you found there, though perhaps a bit more current.” He looked up suddenly, raising his eyebrows, and looked at Vanto. “Current?” he asked.

“ _Up-to-date_ ,” Vanto supplied, switching to Sy Bisti. 

“Up-to-date,” Thrawn repeated in Basic. “Thank you.”

Some day, Faro told herself, they would start discussing all sorts of secrets in front of her, thinking she couldn’t speak Sy Bisti. She couldn’t wait for that day. She reached for the broken datapad and Vanto slid it over to her, though his eyes were very much glued to Thrawn’s charcoal pencils and flimsi pad. 

Silently, Faro tried her hand at fixing the computer. Next to her, Thrawn worked steadily with the pencil, writing out a list in what Faro first assumed to be his native language and later realized was just excessively elegant Basic. In Thrawn’s hand, the familiar alphabet she’d grown up with looked more like ancient calligraphy — and was almost as illegible. With nothing to do, Vanto leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest and eyebrows furrowed in thought.

It was a long time before anyone spoke.

“What did you make of the lymoths?” Thrawn asked. Faro glanced at him — she’d had no luck with the datapad so far and thoroughly believed it was too far gone to repair — and then at Vanto.

Neither of them answered. While the silence stretched on, Thrawn examined the full page of spidery writing before him. 

“The question,” he reminded them, “is whether those particular moths are native to this planet or perhaps were introduced by a foreign sentient species — and _if_ they were introduced, we must ascertain _when_. The datacard which I entrusted to you, Commander Vanto, contained complete information on native insects, among other things; unfortunately, I thought it unnecessary to memorize the full report before landing.”

His eyes cut toward the broken datapad in Faro’s hand. She wondered whether he was mentally reprimanding himself for not carrying a few extras or — more likely — mentally reprimanding her and Vanto for not bringing their own. 

_Memorize the full report,_ he said. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

“Of course,” Thrawn continued, “no warrior is ever fully prepared for a mission, and improvisation is often necessary. The datacard, please, Commander Vanto.”

Vanto handed it over with a glimmer of hope in his eyes, but that hope was dashed immediately when Thrawn only secreted the datacard away in his pocket.

“Tell me what you noticed about the lymoths,” Thrawn prompted again. When neither of them indicated a desire to take the lead, he said, “Start small. Organize your data first; come to conclusions later.”

With a hesitant look at Vanto, Faro said, “Three moths, all with a roughly three-inch wingspan, all with the same coloring and pattern, more or less. Coloring was brown and white; pattern resembled — er, sort of like the lines on a map.”

She looked to Vanto to see if he agreed; he nodded his head.

“There are mapwing butterflies on Lysatra,” he said thoughtfully. “They’re not moths — and they’re much smaller — but they have a similar pattern.”

It occurred to Faro immediately that the moths might, in fact, be a cleverly-disguised map to some sort of local Rebel base or hidden weapons cache. She strongly reminded herself she wasn’t in a spy holo and forced that thought away. 

“It’s possible, isn’t it, that the pattern was painted on?” Vanto suggested, his eyes lighting up. “Like a hidden map to a — a Rebel base, maybe? Or smuggled goods?”

Damn him. Rather grumpily, Faro forced her brain into overtime in an effort to follow this new development to the right conclusion. What was more likely, smugglers or Rebels? Was it possible the map had been left by Imperial agents, since they knew for sure Imperials, at least, had been here before? Or was it a remnant of the family who’d once owned this house, the ones who took vacations and bought gaudy souvenir clothes saying I <3 Coruscant?

Surely _they_ didn’t have anything to hide — and even if they did, why would they choose to hide the map to it on a trio of dead lymoths? No, it had to be one of the first three options instead, or something else … something Faro couldn’t even think of. She glanced at Vanto and saw him deep in thought as well. 

“ _Was_ the pattern painted on?” Thrawn asked mildly. He’d crossed his arms on the edge of the table and angled his head down, examining his own list of _whatever he’d written_ rather than watch Vanto and Faro as they thought.

Looking chagrined, Vanto said, “I didn’t think to check.”

“In this case, a harmless oversight,” said Thrawn. “I did think to check. It is a natural pattern.”

Well, kriff. Faro’s instincts had been right; it was too much like a spy thriller to be true. Which begged the question — where the hell was Thrawn going with this?

“Commander Faro,” said Thrawn, glancing up from his list to pin her with his eyes. “You noted the size and coloring of the lymoths. What can you extrapolate from those details?”

Faro forced herself not to look at Vanto this time. “They’re all the same sex,” she hazarded. “No sizing or pattern differences typically means they’re all male or all female; I don’t know how to tell which is which.”

“Not all insects are sexually dimorphic,” Thrawn told her. “In this case…”

He carefully folded over the top sheet of flimsi on his pad, revealing the blank page beneath. Quickly, and with astonishing artistic skill, he sketched out the underside of a moth very similar to the ones they’d seen in the other room. 

“Any flying insect must keep its wings together in flight somehow,” Thrawn said as he worked. “Which do you suppose would be heavier, male or female?”

There was a brief pause before Vanto beat Faro to the punch. “Female,” he said. “But only sometimes — when she’s laden with eggs.”

“Correct. And as such —” He finished the sketch with two quick flourishes of the pencil and turned the flimsi pad so both Faro and Vanto could see. “—male wings are held together by the retinaculum — this —” He indicated what looked to Faro almost like a small branch on the wing. “—and the frenulum, which hooks into the retinaculum here.” 

He indicated a thin, dark line he’d drawn on the wing, then looked up, studying both their faces to see if they understood.

“Only the frenulum is visible without a microscope,” he said. “Now this —” Quickly, he sketched out another wing. “—is what the female looks like. Note the additional bristles on the frenulum; these provide extra support for the female’s weight.”

Faro studied the diagram a moment longer before sitting back with a nod of understanding. Briskly, Thrawn ripped the flimsi out of the pad and dropped it in the trash bin near the table with a carelessness Faro found surprising, especially given the high quality of the sketch and his own almost maniacal passion for other people’s art.

Then again, it wasn’t like any of them had any reason to keep it, she supposed. Still, she noticed that Vanto, too, looked a little offended, an expression he quickly hid behind a veneer of professional interest.

“All three lymoths were male,” Thrawn said. He looked between Faro and Vanto, his arms crossed on the table again. “Do either of you find this significant?”

Neither of them answered right away. It was distinctly (and strangely) intimidating, Faro thought, to be faced with Thrawn’s Stern Teacher look when he was dressed like a civilian and slouching over a kitchen table with his hair in disarray. Maybe it was just because she was so used to seeing him in uniform.

“Then let’s continue,” Thrawn said when the silence stretched on. “What else did you notice?”

Faro could see Vanto staring at her out of the corner of her eye. She suspected he, like her, was drawing a blank.

“Nothing, sir,” she said, biting the bullet. Thrawn glanced questioningly at Vanto, who nodded in agreement. Thrawn returned his gaze to the list before him, completely expressionless.

“The lymoths are a species known as ‘contour moths’ native to the nearby planet Altha; their name comes from the pattern on their wings, which, as Commander Vanto remarked, resembles the contour lines of a map.” 

Using his pencil, Thrawn crossed one item off his list, located another item further down, and crossed that one off, too. He scratched his nose when he was done — Faro noted this automatically, then supposed it probably wasn’t a gesture of significance.

“Altha is home to a sentient alien race, the Althans,” Thrawn continued, “who range in height from two-point-three to three-point-five meters as adults. They are capable of sustaining cold temperatures but are bothered by the damp. The one who visited this safehouse brought those three contour moths with him.”

“Why?” Faro blurted at the same time Vanto said,

“How do you know?”

Methodically, Thrawn ticked off three more items and set his pencil aside. “You noticed the dried flowers arranged in the frame, of course,” he said. “Those flowers were dried the old-fashioned way; they were bundled together and tied at the base of their conjoined stems with a piece of string, then hung to dry for several weeks — this much is evident from the position of the flowers, the small lines at the base of their stems where the string caused flaking, and the odor. Flowers dried in a mechanical press do not retain their fragrance.

“The flowers were arranged on flimsi sheet music extracted from a book; as you know, most musicians now use holo projectors. The level of technology in this house — the heavily used sonic laundry, for example, and this box of datacards — indicates that whoever lived here immediately before it was commandeered for Imperial use did have access to both holo projectors and mechanical presses. In fact, in a pinch, a sonic laundry may be used for the exact same function.”

He raised his eyebrows at them. “Conclusions?”

“The flowers were arranged by someone who lived here before those technological advances were made,” Faro said, starting with the most obvious solution. “Or at least, before they became commonplace.”

“Before inter-system trade began,” Vanto put in. “Or during a lull when trade was cut off. It’s likely inhabitants of this planet never saw traders from outside systems; the best goods would be delivered to the most populous planet—”

“Altha,” Thrawn said.

“—and then Althans would re-sell the goods to less-populous planets in the system so they could turn a profit.” 

Faro frowned at that. “Then we don’t know that the contour moths were brought here by the same Althan we’re trying to track,” she said. “They could have been brought here years ago; some little old lady could have purchased them from an Althan trader, for all we know.”

Vanto’s face fell, but Thrawn’s eyes were glittering. “Not so,” he said. “We haven’t finished with the flowers — before we move on, Commanders, tell me what you noticed about the frame.”

They were both silent. Faro had taken no notice of the frame at all; now she was trying to figure out where Thrawn was going with this rather than try to think back and force false observations into her own head.

“It was inexpensive,” Thrawn said, looking back down at his handwritten list. “Perhaps homemade, perhaps purchased from a neighbor; either way, not mass-produced. The sheet music molded perfectly to the backing; whoever arranged the flowers took care to ensure all measurements were correct. Compare this with the contour moths.”

“Sir?” Faro asked.

“The frame for the three contour moths was, once again, hand-made. The wood was aged to roughly the same degree as the wildflower frame; both were taken from local trees. You may have recognized the peculiar coloring.”

Faro sneaked a glance at Vanto, confirming to herself that neither of them had recognized a thing.

“Unlike the wildflowers,” Thrawn continued, “the contour moths were pinned to a sheet of expensive synthrubber, which can only be purchased locally through universities, specifically for entomological purposes. This is true in many worlds galaxy-wide; it is a little-known specialty product. Furthermore, the synthrubber had been carefully trimmed to fit an eight-by-three frame. The frame itself was, however, eight-by-four.”

 _Oh,_ Faro thought as pieces fell into place. Then, to her intense frustration, the pieces failed to put themselves together. So the moths had been fitted for a different frame — so what?

“Have you ever preserved mapwing butterflies?” Thrawn asked, suddenly turning to face Vanto.

“Ah, no,” Vanto said, eyes wide.

“Commander Faro?” Thrawn prompted. “Any butterflies or moths at all.”

“No, sir,” Faro said. 

“There is a specific process used for insects with delicate wings,” Thrawn explained. “Contour moths, specifically, are placed in instant relaxing chambers which ease the insect’s brittleness and allow entomologists to handle them without damaging the specimen. With a relaxing chamber, insects are ready to be pinned within minutes. These machines are easier to come by than the synthrubber, though only slightly; no entomologists and very few hobbyists work without them.

“Prior to the invention and galaxy-wide proliferation of relaxing chambers,” Thrawn said, “a different method was used. Chambers were created using air-tight boxes or tins lined with damp flimsi and antiseptic. This is a multi-day process and leaves a distinctive antiseptic odor on the preserved insects which is noticeable even in older specimens.”

Without looking down, he crossed several more items off his list. 

“The three contour moths carried no odor,” Thrawn said. “They also showed no sign of the damage common to insects handled in home-made relaxing chambers; they were relaxed in a modern contraption and pinned to modern synthrubber, then transported here in a modern frame, which was damaged on our mysterious Althan’s journey. He located a new frame inside the house and transferred his moths there.”

Silently, he pushed back in his chair and stared down at his hands, fiddling with something beneath the table. Faro couldn’t see what he was doing; beside her, Vanto craned his neck, but couldn’t see either. After a moment, Thrawn’s hands stilled.

He didn’t look up. His eyes were moving rapidly back and forth, his mouth a grim line.

“Doctor Varren Knuss,” he announced finally. “An Althan entomologist stationed at the University of Carvas, Altha’s capitol city. His height is listed as eight feet, five inches.”

And with that, he lifted his hands from beneath the table and showed them what he was holding: the kriffing hand-held computer he’d used to track Vanto when the avalanche dragged him under.

With Vanto’s datacard inserted into its reader slot.

“You had a working datapad this _whole time?_ ” Vanto said, his patience slipping.

“Yes,” said Thrawn, like this was no big deal. “Unfortunate that none of us could fix the other. Still, I find it always worthwhile to test one’s skills, particularly in areas outside one’s expertise. Such as technological repair.”

“You had a _working datapad_ ,” Faro repeated, her own patience remarkably thin, “and you let us both sit here piddling around with the broken one for _hours_?”

Was it her imagination, or did Thrawn look mildly affronted?

“You were both aware I possessed a palm computer,” he reminded them. “Each of you saw it when I located Commander Vanto.”

“Yeah,” Vanto said, clearly still peeved, “I was kind of preoccupied at the time.”

Faro only massaged her temples, preferring to let her silence speak for itself. After a moment, looking almost abashed, Thrawn turned back to his working datapad.

“Publicly, Doctor Knuss is known for his Rebel leanings,” Thrawn noted. “Privately … it would appear his eldest daughter is attending university on Coruscant, under an Imperial scholarship and interning with Malei Hokins, a member of the Imperial Senate.”

So their double agent had arrived here before them — by at least a week, judging by the thin layer of dust Vanto had discovered on certain items around the house. But why had he been staying here rather than at the safehouse farther north, where he’d planned to meet them? And why had he arrived on planet so early?

Evading enemies?

Setting a trap?

“Decent cover for a double agent,” Vanto conceded. “How long has he been publishing pro-Rebel literature, though?”

“Eight years,” said Thrawn without consulting his palm computer. “Thorough, but largely irrelevant. Admiral Konstantine informed me Varren Knuss was a spy working to infiltrate the Rebel cell on his home planet.”

He looked at them gravely, and in that instant lightning cracked behind them, lighting up the room. Faro swore she could feel electricity in the room with them, making the air sizzle with tension. 

“The issue,” Thrawn said, “is that Admiral Konstantine believed Varren Knuss’s home planet was Goppa. According to these reports — independent reports not received from either Admiral Konstantine nor Varren Knuss — Goppa is an unpopulated and inhabitable moon. Altha, meanwhile, has neither a strong Imperial presence nor a known Rebel cell to infiltrate.”

For a long moment, Faro and Vanto only stared at him, each of them allowing the information to sink in. Thrawn turned away from them entirely and stared out the window, his posture weary, his eyes unreadable and far away.

It was Vanto who spoke first. “So who _is_ Knuss working for?” he asked.

And it was Faro who asked her own question in reply:

“And what does he want with _us_?”

* * *

The flimsi pad was now thoroughly covered in Thrawn’s calligraphic writing, this time consisting of speculation based not around the moths but around Varren Knuss himself. It was impossible for Faro to tell whether Thrawn had known Knuss wasn’t a double agent when this mission started; he’d found the information about Knuss on the datacard so quickly she had a hard time believing he hadn’t seen it before. And she had an even _harder_ time reconciling the fact that Thrawn had this information available prior to their departure from the _Chimaera_ , but apparently hadn’t examined it until now.

But then it begged the question — why had he come at all, not knowing who the enemy really was? Why bring Vanto and Faro along with him, unprepared and uninformed? It was unlike Thrawn in the extreme to go into a situation like this; although Faro had heard, mostly from Vanto, that Thrawn made a habit of walking into traps, he only did so when he knew exactly how to manipulate the situation to his benefit.

There were no immediate answers; all Faro could do was trust that such answers would come and push back her doubts until then. 

She was gratified when Thrawn handed her the functional comlink, giving her something to do with her hands — something to take her mind off more pressing questions.

When he pushed back from the table, every movement a little stiff and slow, Faro followed him with her eyes. 

“Continue working on communications, Commander,” Thrawn requested.

Faro’s mouth twisted; across from her, Vanto couldn’t hold back a sour remark.

“You’re sure you don’t have a secret functional comlink hidden in your pocket somewhere?”

Thrawn blinked slowly — an unreadable blink. “The comlink _is_ functional, Commander,” he said. “It is the storm which impedes communications. Until I construct an impedance matcher, we have no choice but to attempt to reach the _Chimaera_ as frequently as possible, no matter how futile it might seem.”

Though Faro never trained as a communications officer, she remembered what an impedance matcher was from the Academy and couldn’t help furrowing her eyebrows at Thrawn.

“How are you going to build an impedance matcher _here_ , sir?” She cast her eyes around the safehouse, half-expecting to suddenly notice a workshop she hadn’t seen before.

She found nothing, of course. When she returned her gaze to Thrawn, he was leaning forward with his hands braced on the back of his chair. He stared down at his bruised and swollen knuckles, at the rash of red sores running up and down his fingers.

His hands had been ruined by the cold, Faro realized. His ribs had been bruised, maybe fractured. There were gashes still healing on his chest — yet he’d been up and about all day, first making the long trek to this safehouse, then studying the house, tinkering, writing, drawing conclusions. Always active, never resting.

When Thrawn finally spoke, it wasn’t to answer her question.

“Is the refresher working?” he asked, still staring at his hands. Faro blinked. Across from her, Vanto looked up from Thrawn’s palm computer, which he was using to study any and all files he could find on this planet.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

Thrawn’s left hand dropped to his side gracelessly; he used the other to push himself away from the chair. In the next moment, he had stolen silently out of the room on bare feet. Faro turned back to the comlink, watching the white light on it blink on and off; she heard the ‘fresher door hiss shut.

Vanto turned back to the palm computer; they both listened as the shower turned on, water pouring out from the dual jets Vanto had already inspected. He and Faro shared a quick glance, neither of them expressive enough to convey an emotion.

They’d each settled into their tasks, each regained their concentration, when they heard a series of loud thuds from the ‘fresher, each individual noise cascading down onto the next.

It sounded an awful lot like somebody slipping and grabbing onto the in-shower rack as they fell, sending all the bottles gathered there hurtling to the floor.

Faro’s eyes flickered up and she caught Vanto looking back at her, hesitation open on his face.

“Nope,” Faro said. “This one’s all yours.”

Vanto stood with a sigh, discarding the palm computer on the kitchen table. He made quick time to the refresher; Faro heard his rapid-fire knocking, then the door sliding open again.

Just as quickly, he was back.

“He’s out cold,” Vanto reported in a clipped voice, stepping just far enough out of the ‘fresher for Faro to hear him. “Need your help.”

Fantastic. Faro pushed back from the table and walked briskly over to Vanto, trying to hide the twist of concern in her gut beneath a veneer of irritation and distaste. She was sure it didn’t fool Vanto for a minute; his own concern was written openly across his face.

Faro led the way into the cramped ‘fresher. As she’d suspected, the rack had come free from the inside wall and the various bottles arranged on it — all of them dusty and old — were now scattered either inside the shower or outside of it on the floor. All that was visible of Thrawn was his scarred back and the back of his head; he’d slumped forward onto his knees, his upper body resting on the edge of the tub. One arm had landed on the outside, limp fingers brushing the floor.

His hair was wet, making it look almost entirely black, and lay tangled over his forehead, dripping water down his face and onto the floor. The shower was still going, but Vanto took care of that quickly enough — he leaned into the spray, heedless of his own clothes, and smacked the water release button with the palm of his hand.

Faro, meanwhile, knelt on the floor next to the tub and leaned down until she could see Thrawn’s face. His eyes were closed, his features relaxed. She raised one of his eyelids with the pad of her thumb and found his eyes dim and dull.

She let the eyelid fall shut again, pulling back slightly. When she put one hand on Thrawn’s bare back, right between his shoulder blades, she could feel him breathing evenly and slow. His skin was cold to the touch.

“Sir?” she said. Vanto hovered behind her, arms crossed, biting his lower lip. 

“I couldn’t wake him,” he said. Faro tapped Thrawn on the back, first gently, then harder, and got no response.

“What did you try?” she asked, looking up at Vanto again.

“What you’re doing, basically. Shook him. Slapped him in the face a little — not hard.”

Which might have been the problem, Faro reflected. Gingerly, she took Thrawn’s hand in hers.

Not so gingerly, she dug her thumbnail into one of the chilblains marring his skin. Her other hand was still on Thrawn’s back, so she felt it when his breath stuttered in an unconscious gasp. 

One long moment later, he blinked. His eyes were still dim, unfocused, but a little brighter than they’d been before. He raised his head a little, blinked hard, and let it fall back once more against the edge of the tub.

His eyes slid closed.

“No,” said Faro sharply, clapping her palm against his cheek. “Sir? Come on. You’re in the tub.”

This got Thrawn’s attention. He opened his eyes again and made a more concerted effort to sit up. He extricated his hands from Faro, running them through his wet hair and then, with an audible sigh, covered his face.

“The water’s stopped,” he said, his voice muffled and uncharacteristically slurred.

“I turned it off,” said Vanto, shifting from one foot to the next.

Slowly, Thrawn scrubbed at his face and sat up, inch by inch, until Faro could see enough of him to tell that his bacta patches were intact on his collarbone and neck and he hadn’t injured himself further.

“What happened?” he asked, finally removing his hands from his face. 

Faro glanced up, over Thrawn’s shoulder, to make eye contact with Vanto.

“You collapsed, I think,” Vanto said. “We heard you fall; when we came in, you were just … sitting there, like you are now. Unconscious.”

There was a crease between Thrawn’s eyebrows, a frown on his lips. Faro couldn’t tell if he was irritated — he certainly _looked_ irritated — or simply deep in thought. Suddenly, he cut his eyes her way, and she couldn’t help but think the look he gave her was unusually hard.

Scrutinizing.

Suspicious?

But he said nothing about it.

“You can go now,” he said, making no effort to stand. Faro wasn’t going to argue with him; she grabbed the edge of the tub and pulled herself to her feet without question, and was out the door a moment later. Vanto took a little longer to follow her, but only a little. It seemed he wasn’t interested in arguing, either.

Outside the ‘fresher, they shared another look. This time, she was sure she could tell what Vanto was thinking.

It was exactly what _she_ was thinking:

_What the hell was that?_

* * *

The days on this planet were only marginally longer than the 24-hour shipboard clock to which Faro was accustomed. Still, thanks to the storm, it had been dark for nine hours already by the time night officially fell — and yet, thanks to the lightning, Faro wasn’t sure she could truly describe the sky outside as dark.

She watched the sky flash on and off, illuminating the trees, the snow, the distant outline of the mountain that had nearly killed them. The room was silent behind her; Vanto had retreated to one of the bedrooms an hour earlier, finally too exhausted from the lingering soreness of his muscles to stay awake. Thrawn was still at the kitchen table, the palm computer in one hand and a half-eaten ration bar in the other. 

Faro glanced back at him and caught him as he slid his eyes away, so casual about it Faro almost doubted that he’d been staring at her. He studied the palm computer, refusing to acknowledge Faro’s eyes on him.

He was acting strange. Vanto had noticed it, too, though she hadn’t discussed it with him. Faro turned back to the window with a scowl; she could chalk it up to exhaustion, or she could say it was the pain from his unhealed wounds, but neither explanation sat right with her. Not fully. 

And suddenly, rather than feeling exhausted, Faro felt like she couldn’t sit still a second longer. She approached the kitchen table with a purpose, the sharp click of her shoes against the floor forcing Thrawn to look up at her. His blank expression broke when she snatched her parka off the back of a chair and turned on her heel.

She shrugged the coat on.

The next moment, she was out the door. 

The cold was no more bearable than it had been earlier that day, when the sun was still out. The wind stung Faro’s face as soon as she stepped outside; it felt like a million tiny shards of ice digging into her every pore. But she could no more force herself to go back inside right now than she could use the Force to fly right off this forsaken planet.

She walked from the front door, pushing her way through tamped-down snow. Their footprints from earlier had been entirely erased by the wind; she retraced her steps nonetheless, marching to the edge of what she might — if it weren’t covered in snow — call the front lawn.

There she stopped, her breath coming out in visible puffs before her, her arms crossed over her chest. She watched lightning flash in the distance, so close she could hear it cracking, but not close enough to cause her any harm.

She stood there, shivering in the cold, allowing the lightning to blind her. The minutes slipped by, noticed but unheeded. There was no snow falling; there were no stars visible beyond the clouds.

Slowly, Faro let her eyes slide closed.

She heard the crunch of footsteps in the snow behind her a moment later. There was a brush of air as Thrawn stepped up beside her, his shoulder briefly touching hers before he shifted his stance and moved away.

“Commander,” he said softly.

Faro opened her eyes. Between the flash of the lightning ahead of her and the red glow of Thrawn’s eyes, she could barely see.

“Sir,” she said.

She expected him to tell her it was too cold outside; she expected him to say, _It’s time to come in._ But he said nothing, only stood beside her with his eyes fixed, like hers were, on the distant storm.

It had been only a day — no, less than that — since they’d lain next to each other on the shelter floor and talked while Vanto was sleeping. How long had it been since Faro held a late-night conversation like that with anyone, talking until her eyes ached and her throat was sore, saying anything that came to mind? She’d talked to her sister that way, when they were children — staying up late in the night, whispering so their grandmother wouldn’t hear them. And in the Academy, at age fourteen, she’d met the best friends of her life and done the same with them, staying up unwisely to talk until three a.m., then dragging themselves out of bed at six for training.

She and Thrawn had discussed nothing of importance last night. Nothing personal. Yet Faro found herself thinking of that conversation with an awful, twisted sensation of longing in her heart.

She sneaked a glance at Thrawn, mentally begging him to speak. 

He didn’t look back at her. She could tell he noticed her looking at him, but he pretended not to see.

And they stayed out there for ten more minutes — both of them shivering, neither of them moving closer for warmth — and he didn’t say a word.

* * *

The lightning storm had diminished by the time Faro dragged herself out of bed not long after dawn, but it hadn’t evaporated yet. There were still occasional flashes over the forest, still the occasional crack of electricity against a tree. 

She took her breakfast in the form of spiced tea and instant bao, eating at the window rather than the kitchen table. The comlink had been in her hand ever since she woke up, and by now, it was an automatic reflex for her to press the outgoing call button with her thumb every thirty seconds. So far, she hadn’t made a connection.

What was the crew thinking right now? How long before they sent an expedition planet-side to find them?

And how badly would a rescue mission mess with Thrawn’s plan, whatever that plan might be? 

She wasn’t sure where Thrawn had slept the night before, but she suspected he’d chosen the cot in the den. After Faro and Vanto chose their beds, it was likely he’d avoided the only free bedroom left because it was the one Knuss had slept in — perhaps Thrawn wished to preserve evidence.

Or perhaps he avoided it because it was adjacent to Vanto’s bedroom and across the hall from Faro’s. This idea seemed absurd on the surface, but Faro couldn’t put it out of her head — and she certainly couldn’t ask Thrawn about it. He’d left the safehouse as soon as Faro had emerged from her bedroom; he was already fully dressed for an excursion when she was still rubbing sleep out of her eyes.

He’d been gone for an hour now. Searching the other safehouses, he said. No need for her or Vanto to tag along. 

* * *

_“Let me land the shuttle,” Commander Vanto says._

_It’s uncharacteristic of him to say this for many reasons._

_One: Commander Vanto is always careful to refer to Thrawn as “sir,” yet here he has left the honorific off._

_Two: Commander Vanto is a strict adherent to the Empire’s rank system, and knows it is Thrawn’s duty as Admiral to fly this shuttle, as it is his own._

_Three: Commander Vanto has flown with Thrawn many times and knows there is negligible difference in their skills at both flying and landing._

_Four: This is not a question. This is a demand. Even without the honorific, Commander Vanto rarely — perhaps never — makes demands._

_Slowly, Thrawn looks over his shoulder at Commander Vanto. He doesn’t take his hands off the controls._

_“No, Commander,” he says, and he makes sure to keep his voice mild and inoffensive. Vanto’s shoulders are a tight line, his jaw clenched, his hands squeezed into fists._

_Thrawn has seen this posture before. He’s seen it aimed at himself, from Vanto, fifty-seven times in four years. But in all fifty-seven of those times, he saw the posture only after he said something directly questionable or offensive, whether he knew it was offensive or not._

_This is different. This is Vanto entering the cockpit uninvited, already consumed with anger. This is Vanto reacting to some provocation Thrawn isn’t privy to._

_This, of course, doesn’t mean Thrawn_ hasn’t _provoked Commander Vanto in some way. It only means he doesn’t know how._

_“Let me land the shuttle,” Commander Vanto says again._

_This time, voice still as unthreatening as he can make it, Thrawn says, “Why?” If there’s a reason, he wants to know it. He_ needs _to know it; it seems likely Commander Vanto knows something Thrawn doesn’t — or_ thinks _he knows something Thrawn does not — and that’s why he’s here, already tense, insisting he take Thrawn’s spot._

 _But Vanto doesn’t answer the question. His teeth are gritted when he opens his mouth and says, “Let me land the shuttle …_ sir _.”_

_Thrawn’s eyes narrow. He turns back to the viewport, deliberately facing away from Vanto. He can still see the commander in the viewport reflection._

_“Return to troop transport, Commander,” Thrawn says, his voice cold again. “You and Commander Faro will inspect our supplies and pack your bags.”_

_Vanto doesn’t obey immediately. He_ is _moving, but only in as much as he is trembling, his fury turning into a kinetic cue. Thrawn watches the other man’s reflection in the glass, his own body tensing invisibly. He realizes he is preparing for a fight; he tries to ignore the confused flurry of emotion that realization brings with it._

 _He’s preparing to fight_ Vanto _, of all people. Eli Vanto, who has been the closest thing Thrawn has to a friend for four years._

_And he doesn’t even know why._

_“Commander…” he says, but he doesn’t know how to follow that up. So he forces himself to take a steady breath and relax, letting the tension ease out of him. With his hands firmly on the controls, he tries a different tack. “Eli, return to troop transport. You and Commander Faro will inspect the supplies and pack your bags. That’s an order.”_

_And in the reflection, he sees Vanto’s shoulders slump, his hands relax, his jaw unclench._

_“Yes, sir,” Vanto says easily. There’s no hint of anger or insubordination in his voice. He turns and exits as though nothing has happened._

_Thrawn is left to analyze every second of their interaction on his own._

* * *

Thrawn made his way from one safehouse to the next, allowing his mind to slip into a near-meditative state as he went through the automatic, physical work. He kept himself on low-level alert, his senses in tune for any sort of attack either from beast or from Varren Knuss himself, who could only be hiding in one of the safehouses nearby.

It was possible, knowing how Commanders Faro and Vanto analyzed situations, that they believed Thrawn was searching for Varren Knuss. This was not correct. He was searching, first and foremost, for a lab — and on the third safehouse he inspected, he found it. 

The door to this safehouse was partially blocked by a wall of snow slightly over a meter long, and as Thrawn had approached the safehouse by pushing through and over this same wall of snow, he was forced to stoop low to enter once he pushed the door open. He half-jumped, half-slid to the safehouse floor, scanning the room as he did so for any signs of life, no matter how unlikely he deemed that to be. 

Then, when the surroundings showed no evidence that anyone else was there, Thrawn stomped the snow off his boots as an afterthought and moved deeper into the house.

It was much the same as the other houses. Culturally, it was a mess. Although each house had been occupied quite clearly by humans, they were all of different origins and frequently of disparate genders and ages. They were none of them related; nor were any of them friends.

It was clear to Thrawn that the residents of each house had been assigned to live there by someone else, who put little thought into interpersonal relations. In the last house, he’d found evidence of several long-distant physical fights between roommates; in this house, arguments over decor and cleaning routines seemed more common. Two of the humans (one with an artistic bent, one with no artistic talent at all) had been in favor of loud, bright colors; the third human had preferred muted colors, and it was true — at least, to Thrawn’s eye — that these muted colors were more aesthetically combined, in the few areas which that third human had been allowed to influence to a noticeable degree.

In all cases, too, the safehouses had clearly been abandoned for far longer than Admiral Konstantine’s report would have him believe. Thrawn’s estimate was no less than forty-seven years — yet Admiral Konstantine had told him the inhabitants of this moon only emerged from the underground during the Clone War, long after these shelters had been truly built and subsequently abandoned. 

It was not yet clear to Thrawn whether Admiral Konstantine had deceived him deliberately or been himself the victim of deception. Neither option spoke well of Admiral Konstantine’s competency, especially considering his rank.

He searched the rooms at a quick pace, noting again the peculiar lack of protective cold-weather clothing (which, to his disappointment, neither Vanto nor Faro seemed to have noticed, despite clear geographical evidence that this moon was of a similar climate fifty years ago, meaning residents then would need the same heated body-sleeves and parkas as visitors did now). There were sweaters and thermal underwear in every room, along with lighter garments meant as base layers, but no outer layers. No coats, no face masks, no snow boots.

He spent no more than five minutes in each room, rooting out the hidden (and sometimes easily-accessible) caches of datacards as he went. Valuable supplies, including foodstuffs and easily-cannibalized electronics, went into the cross-body bag he’d found in the safehouse he, Vanto, and Faro had claimed as their temporary home. His rucksack remained on his back, empty. 

In the master bedroom was a crude wooden frame, three male lymoths with a dull contour-map pattern on their wings inside. Thrawn glanced at them, noting a few familiar characteristics: the expensive synthrubber to which they were pinned; the inexact fit of the frame; the natural, musty smell which came with modern relaxing chambers.

There had been lymoths in the other two safehouses, too. Those frames had been different — new, mass-produced, and perfectly fitted to the rubber. Other than that, the moths were the same as these, the same as the ones in Safehouse 1. The patterns were seared into Thrawn’s memory — each one subtly different from the next, each strangely unsettling in a way he couldn’t define. Too symmetrical, yes; he had the impression the moths had been bred selectively for generations, no doubt by Varren Knuss himself, to attain a specific pattern. But it wasn’t just that, and it bothered Thrawn that he couldn’t pinpoint the problem.

He moved quickly, knowing it was quite possible today’s search would last until the late hours of the evening, and might necessitate an overnight stay at one of the other safehouses.

Then, quite incidentally, he arrived at the basement. He paused at the top of the stairs, not bothering to even touch the lightswitch on the wall nearby — he could see well enough without it, and it was possible any materials kept in such a dark place might suffer a negative reaction to sudden light.

At the bottom of the stairs, in plain view, was a workbench. Arrayed upon it was a series of jars, vials and tins, each of them labeled. When Thrawn narrowed his eyes, he could read those labels even from a distance.

Ammonium fluoride. Tetraethyl orthosilicate. And, as he’d expected, large amounts of silicon dioxide harvested from the petrified trees.

Many people Thrawn had known in the past, including Commander Vanto, might have whispered “Jackpot” at this point. Thrawn merely allowed himself a smile. 

As he moved down the stairs, he slid the empty rucksack from his back and opened it. There were too many large items he needed to take from this workbench — the generic equipment necessary for mixing chemicals of any kind, yes, but also the supercritical drying chamber — and it would take many trips to transport them all to his safehouse by hand. 

It would be best, he knew, to leave the items and conduct the work (which would, after all, require three days of diffusion, during which time Thrawn would have nothing to do but wait) here, where the laboratory was already prepared. But that would require either leaving Faro and Vanto entirely alone — something he could no longer do, not with their peculiar behavior as of late — or leaving the chemicals to diffuse unsupervised, which was also not an option, as Varren Knuss was undoubtedly nearby and would take the opportunity to sabotage Thrawn in a heartbeat, though he may not understand what, exactly, he was sabotaging.

The only option, therefore, was to transport the materials to Safehouse 1, where he could simultaneously keep an eye on Faro and Vanto and prevent sabotage to the project. 

With the rucksack full, he slipped it onto his back, wincing as the straps brushed his wounded chest. The walk here had been challenging due only to the thick snow and the cold temperatures; the walk back would be even more so.

And the walk after that.

And the walk after that.

Grimacing, Thrawn climbed out of the basement with the entire chemical contents of a laboratory on his back and made his way — very carefully — home.

* * *

“Good evening,” Thrawn said, nudging the front door open with his shoulder. He pushed his way inside the safehouse, not seeming to notice the questioning gazes thrown at him by both Faro and Vanto. There was snow in his hair; his ears and nose had turned purple from the cold, but he wasn’t shivering.

“Sir,” Faro said. She noted the heavy rucksack on Thrawn’s back; it looked oddly lumpy, the weight distributed unevenly by multiple objects inside. He had another bag, one she didn’t recognize, strapped across his chest.

“Did you find anyone?” asked Vanto. Thrawn shot him a strange look — a hard look, Faro thought — and, for a moment, didn’t seem like he would answer.

“I found a chemical laboratory,” he said. His voice was grim enough one would think he was announcing the discovery of several fresh corpses. “I am transferring its contents here.”

“A laboratory?” Faro repeated. Her brow furrowed as she thought back to Thrawn’s initial report on the residents of this moon — they’d moved aboveground during the Clone War, he said, and there’d been very few of them. They were workers, she knew that much — but workers on what? She’d imagined them working in mines beneath the moon’s surface, harvesting natural resources for export, but this wasn’t information she’d been explicitly told. 

Then, just as she was about to open her mouth and ask a question, the answer hit her. The petrified trees — the strands of glass inside —

“Silicon dioxide,” she breathed. “Of course. The people here were making aerogel.”

Thrawn paused briefly in the process of removing both bags; he shot her a guarded look of approval. “Some of them were,” he agreed. “Some were here only to harvest the silicon dioxide and maintain the safehouses.”

“Aerogel?” Vanto said, his eyebrows furrowed.

“An ultralight substance,” Thrawn explained, “which makes for highly effective insulation. This safehouse contains large amounts of aerogels in its walls and a thin coating on the roof, which prevents snow and ice from forming. It is made of silicon dioxide.”

“I _know_ what it is,” Vanto said. “I was just surprised they were making it here.”

Thrawn gave an uncharacteristic, almost sullen shrug, which he seamlessly turned into a twitch of his shoulders to remove the cross-body bag. He held it out for Faro to take and she peered inside, briefly surprised by the lack of laboratory equipment. It was filled instead with datacards and food supplies; Faro took the bag with her to the kitchen, where she could simultaneously empty the bag and maintain her conversation with Thrawn and Vanto.

“You could have taken one of us with you,” Vanto said, sounding slightly offended. “We could have helped you carry things.”

“You _will_ help me carry things,” Thrawn said blandly. “There is more yet to transport. It will require several trips on my own.”

“Oh.”

Thrawn was emptying his rucksack now, arranging jars and tins on the kitchen table. He grabbed the box of datacards almost absently and handed it to Vanto, who took it without comment and placed it out of the way. When the rucksack was empty, Thrawn leaned over to inspect each container thoroughly, making note of the exact amount available of each chemical. 

Faro glanced over the containers herself, though the names meant little to her. Absolute 200-proof ethanol — that one she knew. And deionized water, of course, she recognized from the basic chemistry course she’d taken at the Academy her third year. Acetone, ammonium fluoride, ammonium hydroxide — all familiar names, though she couldn’t say exactly what they were used for. 

Vanto didn’t seem much more enlightened than she was; as a supply officer, he would have been assigned more mathematics than sciences at the Academy. They watched as Thrawn organized the containers using some method only he understood, then turned back to the rucksack…

...and removed an absolutely massive, heavy-looking cooler, which he slid out of the rucksack and left on the floor.

“Liquid carbon dioxide,” he said, although no one had asked. “Other than the supercritical drying chamber, this is the heaviest item we will need to transport.”

“A drying chamber, sir?” Vanto asked, a little weakly. Like Faro, he was probably imagining just how big a drying chamber might be.

“It is a _compact_ drying chamber,” said Thrawn apologetically, “but still quite large. Unfortunately, a supercritical drying chamber is absolutely necessary for the production of aerogel.”

He picked the rucksack up off the floor, shaking it out before throwing it over his back again. He gestured to Faro to keep the other bag; to Vanto, he said, “There will be boxes for you to carry.” Then, looking Faro in the eye, but clearly speaking to both of them, he said, “Prepare yourselves. Cold-weather gear, please.”

As if either of them were going to make the trek to another safehouse in just their borrowed civvies.

* * *

There were, indeed, boxes galore for Vanto to carry. It took the three of them three trips to the safehouse and back to fetch all the items they would need — or all the items Thrawn _said_ they would need, though he’d been awfully quiet on his reasoning so far.

By the time they finished, Faro’s legs felt heavy from walking so long in such heavy snow, and her back ached from the load she’d carried each time. Vanto’s face was lined and pinched, the way it always got when he was both weary and somewhat peeved.

Thrawn, who’d made one more trip than they had — not to mention whatever other safehouses he’d inspected — seemed unaffected. He brushed the melting snow out of his hair and examined one of the boxes they’d hauled over — Vanto had been able to carry several at a time, hindered not by weight but by the height of the boxes, as he could only carry four before they blocked his view of the ground ahead of him.

At least now Faro knew why Thrawn hadn’t been shivering when he first came home; the walk itself was such a workout that, inside her cold-weather gear, she was overheated and soaked with sweat, which never quite had the chance to cool. She changed back into her civvies before attempting anything else, and when she came back from the ‘fresher, Vanto was gone and Thrawn — still in his mended parka and snow pants — had made the twelve boxes disappear.

“Commander,” he said as Faro walked in.

Did that mean he was done being weird?

“Sir,” Faro replied. She joined him at the kitchen table, where he was making a complete inventory of the lab’s contents. When her arm brushed his, he slid the pad of flimsi to the left, picked up his pencil, and took two small steps to the side, where Faro couldn’t touch him by accident. 

So that was a no.

Faro made a concerted effort to squash the confusion and hurt that rose inside her at that. Her voice was professionally neutral when she spoke. “Why are we making aerogel, sir?” she asked.

“I suspect only I will be making aerogel,” Thrawn corrected softly. “I do not believe either you or Commander Vanto have any significant chemical training.”

He was right on that, but … “Not really an answer, sir,” Faro told him.

He glanced at her. His eyes were unreadable; he seemed to be studying her, but for what, Faro couldn’t tell. 

“I can, of course, teach you anything you need to know,” said Thrawn. “You have an aptitude for hard sciences, Commander, just as Commander Vanto has an aptitude for mathematics. I believe you will make an excellent lab partner.”

Which, while flattering, _still_ wasn’t really an answer. Faro decided to let the matter drop.

“I’d like that, sir,” she said instead. Her lips quirked. “It’ll take the edge off the boredom, too, sir. Always a plus.”

He inclined his head. Vanto entered the room behind them, dressed in civilian clothes again, and joined them at the table. He planted both hands on the smooth, worn wood, taking up the area to Thrawn’s left as he leaned over to read the inventory which, by all rights, he should have written up himself. Thrawn, now wedged firmly between his two commanders, seemed to freeze, even going so far as to hold his breath — whether this was a conscious choice or an unconscious reaction, Faro couldn’t say. There was a brief moment when both she and Vanto could clearly read the discomfort — almost distress — on his face.

Then, as smoothly as ever, it was wiped away. He took a step back, removing himself from the situation entirely, and walked around to the other side of the table. 

If he was attempting to look casual, he hadn’t exactly nailed it. Vanto and Faro shared a look, equal parts confusion and concern. Across from them, Thrawn pretended not to notice. 

“Rest, both of you,” he said, staring down at the chemical array. “In an hour, we’ll begin.”

* * *

_“Let me come with you,” Faro says._

_It is like her to make demands this way. Commander Faro is not quite so concerned with the rules as Commander Vanto is, and she cares little for the chain of command. Although she has recently made more of an effort to tack ‘sir’ onto the end of her communications with Thrawn, she doesn’t always succeed._

_As such, Thrawn notices the strangeness of this request, but almost dismisses it out of hand._

_“I was not aware you cared for ground missions,” he says._

_“I do,” says Faro. Her posture is strange; her back is straight, her shoulders back. She is always stiff and upright on the bridge, for the sake of appearances, but they are not on the bridge. They are in his aft bridge office, where it is common for Faro to slouch almost imperceptibly and cross her arms. Typically, she plants her feet at shoulder length; now, her feet are together, heels touching._

_“For this mission in particular,” Thrawn says, watching Faro’s face carefully, “I plan to take only a small contingent of stormtroopers. I do not anticipate any officers will be necessary.”_

_She has no visible reaction to this rejection of her proposal. Her eyes remain peculiarly hard; perhaps determined, perhaps angry. Her jaw remains clenched. She is still standing at attention, even though Thrawn has already told her to stand at ease._

_Even though she never stands at attention in his office._

_“Let me come with you,” says Faro again. Her tone of voice this time is identical to the first time she made this request. As such, Thrawn is surprised when she speaks again and the tone changes, becoming more casual, more friendly, but no less determined. No less certain that she is right. “You don’t need a contingent of stormtroopers for this, sir. All you need is me and maybe Commander Vanto — officers you trust. You don’t know these stormtroopers. You can’t be sure that any of them will do what you say.”_

_This is not true in the slightest, and Thrawn is so grimly surprised by the blatant lie that he doesn’t respond for a while. He knows all his stormtroopers by name; he is well-acquainted with their weaknesses and strength. He is fully capable of selecting a contingent based on those strengths and weaknesses — a contingent he trusts every bit as much as Commanders Faro and Vanto._

_At least,_ almost _as much. He hesitates, because here Commander Faro has a point. He does trust her — and Vanto — a little bit more than the rest of his men. He knows them better, for one — Vanto, especially — and he understands them. Their minds are structured much like his; they are able to follow his thoughts and come to the correct conclusions in a way few people are, with very little coaching._

_“Why do you wish to join me?” Thrawn asks, rather than dismissing Faro out of hand. She doesn’t look surprised that he’s considering it; a shadow of a smile crosses her lips._

_And her posture melts, bringing her back to the Karyn Faro he knows._

_“It’s like this, sir,” she says, and her voice is warm and normal again. Thrawn finds himself relaxing, comforted to find the strangeness of her behavior fading away — though of course, he cannot put it entirely out of mind._

_He listens to her explanation with half an ear. He’ll take her planet-side, of course, since she’s requested it. He’ll take Vanto, too._

_And he’ll keep an eye on them._

* * *

With the lab sprawling over every square inch of the kitchen table and counters, they had no choice but to either stand or to sit cross-legged on the floor and eat there. Because of this, Faro chose ration bars over dehydrated noodles and scarfed them down quickly, eager to get back to work.

Two minutes later, she watched as Thrawn submerged a gel consisting of tetramethyl orthosilicate, methanol, and ammonium hydroxide in pure methanol. He leaned back, watching the mixture for a moment longer, then turned to her, completely stone-faced.

“Now we wait,” he said.

Faro looked down at the submerged gel, her own face blank. “Wait for … what, sir?” she asked. Thrawn was already moving away, swiping his palm computer off the cot, where Vanto had placed it earlier.

“For the remaining water in the gel to diffuse into the methanol,” Thrawn said. “Then we will discard the used methanol and replace it; then we must wait twenty-four hours before starting again.”

Faro stared at him, looking for the hint of a smile just on the off-chance he was joking.

He wasn’t joking.

Boredom set in shortly after. 

After an hour, Faro had examined each of the chemicals so thoroughly that she now had their entire inventory memorized. Vanto was poring over Thrawn’s handwritten report on the uses of aerogel _—_ and instructions on how to make it _—_ with his eyebrows furrowed and his left hand brushing compulsively through his hair, turning it into a mad-scientist rat’s nest. 

When he was done, he slipped the pad of flimsi to Faro so she could memorize that, too. This took, unfortunately, only an hour, and then she was truly left with nothing to do.

She eyed the lab equipment all around her.

Well, _close_ to nothing to do. There wasn’t much here she truly knew how to use, but a microscope? Yeah, she knew how to use that one. There was a box of glass slides alongside it, half of them pre-filled with samples from the planet labeled in scratchy Basic. The others were empty.

It didn’t take her long to go through all of the pre-filled slides. Gradually, she learned what a piece of petrified bark looked like up close _—_ and a skin cell from something called a gira bird _—_ and blood samples from the giant beasts which had attacked them, which were apparently called gopwolves, as well as more blood from someone named Garth who must have been a scientist just as bored as Faro was now.

By the time she glanced up from the microscope, it was dark outside. She had to squeeze her eyes shut hard and blink several times to adjust to the non-magnified world around her. Vanto had taken up the cot in the corner, lounging on it as he tried out datacards Thrawn had fetched from the other houses. As Faro watched, he ejected one card from the palm computer and slotted another one in; a romance holo at least seventy years old fizzled into life, the images grainy and flawed.

“Vintage,” Vanto said approvingly.

“Classic,” Faro corrected. 

“You’ve seen this one?”

“You haven’t?”

Thrawn glanced up from his station near the lab, where he was simultaneously keeping an eye on the marinating gel and working on … something. As Faro turned to look at him, he moved the other project out of sight, tucking one small item into his pocket and hiding another unidentifiable item behind his thigh.

“What about you, sir?” Vanto asked, angling the palm computer so that the holodisplay faced Thrawn. There was an almost invisible, teasing smile on his lips. 

“No,” Thrawn said. The volume slider on the computer was turned all the way down; Thrawn watched the silent figures move around each other, his face blank. It was a scene Faro recognized — a big song-and-dance number her grandmother had hated, but she and her sister had loved when they were kids. She used to have every word memorized; now she couldn’t even remember the tune.

“You want to watch it?” Vanto asked. “I could get it projecting on the wall. Be just like a real cinema.”

“No,” Thrawn said, but his quiet protest was drowned out by Faro’s simultaneous,

“Yeah, go for it.”

A second later, the enlarged figures were dancing across the far wall, bathing the room in a blue glow. Thrawn turned away from the images, focusing his gaze on the methanol tub before him. Faro kept her eyes on the holo, savoring the familiar choreography and faces. A moment later, Vanto turned the volume up just enough to turn the film into a pleasant background noise.

And to remind Faro of that forgotten tune.

Now smiling, she turned back to the last of the pre-prepared slides. She tilted it into the light, squinting to read the label.

 _Garth_ _—_ _skin sample._

Interesting enough. Faro clipped it onto the stage and peered through the eyepiece for a moment. It was mildly entertaining, but not for long, and soon Faro realized she was thinking less about Garth’s unremarkable skin and more about what she would do next, now that she was out of samples.

An idea struck.

“Sir,” she said, still peering through the eyepiece, “do you know how to take a skin sample?”

She could feel Thrawn turn his eyes on her. For a long moment, he didn’t answer — perhaps waiting for her to explain the question, perhaps considering whether he wanted to tell her or not. She couldn’t imagine why he _wouldn’t_ tell her, but he’d been acting strangely enough lately that it was a possibility.

“There is liquid paraffin in that box to your left, Commander,” Thrawn said finally, his voice unreadable. “Place one drop on a blank slide to act as a binding agent. Whose skin sample are you taking?”

“Er,” said Faro, “mine, I guess?”

“Then you will first remove any hair from the area you wish to sample,” Thrawn said. “Spread another drop of liquid paraffin on your skin using your fingers; if you wish to check for parasites, I’d advise you to first pinch the area—”

“Okay, ew,” Faro said. “I’m not checking for _parasites_. Sir. I’m just … bored.”

“I see.” She couldn’t see Thrawn’s face very well, since he was still facing the methanol bath, but she could practically hear him recalibrating. “Take one of the blades from the box,” he said, “and, holding your skin taut, scrape it at a forty-five degree angle until you experience a slight capillary ooze. Tap the blade into the liquid paraffin drop on the slide and cover it. That’s all.”

Wrinkling her nose, Faro dug through the box until she found both a clean razor blade and the jar of liquid paraffin. She studied them for a moment, wondering briefly if she was really so bored that she was willing to cause a _capillary ooze_ to herself (and, on an unrelated note, she really had to question Vanto’s skill as a translator if he allowed Thrawn to go around saying things like _capillary ooze_ ).

Then she glanced up and caught the completely dead-inside cast to Vanto’s eyes as he watched a seventy-year-old romantic musical.

Yeah, she was really that bored.

Several minutes later, with a small patch on her left arm scraped raw and red, Faro gently lowered a cover onto the slide and pressed out any air bubbles she could see. She clipped the sample onto the microscope stage and, feeling pleased with herself in an exhausted, irritated sort of way, bent to look through the eyepiece.

She froze.

She adjusted the magnification and looked again.

Something in her skin sample was moving.

* * *

Vanto moved back from the microscope silently, a troubled look on his face. He rubbed his arm unconsciously as he backed away, soothing the raw area where Faro had scraped his skin for an additional sample. Thrawn’s sleeves were still rolled up from when she’d done the same to him; he’d bled more easily than Faro and Vanto had, almost rendering his sample unreadable, and there were still a few beads of uncoagulated blood standing out on his arm.

He bent over the microscope next, peering through the eyepiece for a long time. He moved from one sample to the next without speaking, observing the hook-like shapes which writhed inside Faro’s skin sample — and the identical ones in Vanto’s.

Then, still not saying a word, he clipped his own skin sample back into place and studied it again. Faro already knew exactly what he would see.

Nothing. Whatever had attached itself to her and Vanto, it hadn’t yet moved on to Thrawn.

Finally, Thrawn leaned away from the microscope. His expression was inscrutable. In her mind, Faro could hear him saying, _If you wish to check for parasites_ ….

“What are they?” Vanto asked. His voice was hollow, his eyes shadowed. He was clutching tightly at his arm, as though if he squeezed hard enough he could kill the parasites. His eyes flickered from Faro to Thrawn, but mostly they stayed on Thrawn.

Faro found herself staring at Thrawn, too. If anyone had the answers here — if anyone knew what was going on—

But when he finally met her gaze, his eyes were cold, not comforting. He held out his hand to Faro, and when she only stared uncomprehendingly at him, he took her hand in his, wrapping his fingers around her wrist and pressing her palm tight against his. His skin was cool and dry; his face gave nothing away.

“Sir?” Faro asked. Her voice came out weaker than she would have liked; her face was flushed and she could feel her palm sweating against Thrawn’s.

“Patience,” he said, and grasped her hand tighter. At the same time, his face hardened into something closely approaching a scowl and he stared Faro down, his red eyes burning into hers for another interminable minute.

It should have been intimidating. Indeed, when they first clasped hands, Faro’s heart was beating loud in her ears, the thought of the strange parasites in her skin sending her close to panic. It only took a few seconds of contact with Thrawn for that to stop. His grip was firm but not confining, the coolness of his skin and the weight of his hand in hers more comforting than it should have been.

Finally, without a word, he let go, leaving Faro bizarrely lightheaded and almost reeling from it all. Thrawn turned to the kitchen table, selecting a fresh razor from the box. He ran its edge along the palm of his hand until it, like his arm, was raw and bleeding.

Faro and Vanto moved aside as Thrawn examined his second skin sample, both of them a little horrified that he’d contaminated himself so willingly. After a moment, Thrawn stepped back from the microscope and gestured for them to take a look.

Vanto went first; he stepped back from the microscope looking puzzled and dazed.

Faro took his place.

Thrawn’s skin sample remained unchanged. There were no hook-shaped parasites wiggling beneath the cover; touching Faro, his hand against hers, had not infected him.

“It’s human-specific,” Vanto said. Faro pulled back from the microscope, glancing automatically at Thrawn.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps it simply cannot be spread by skin-to-skin contact. Would you like to try, Commander Vanto?”

Vanto hesitated only for a second. He grasped Thrawn’s left hand in his, both of them holding onto each other for a full minute. When the seconds had ticked to an end, Vanto started to pull back — and stopped when he realized Thrawn wasn’t letting go.

“Five minutes this time,” Thrawn said tonelessly.

“Oh, fantastic,” Vanto grumbled, but he didn’t pull away. He shifted uncomfortably as they held hands, occasionally shooting disgruntled, helpless looks Faro’s way.

Pretending he didn’t enjoy it, Faro suspected. She’d done the same, after all. It was annoyingly pleasant to hold Thrawn’s hand. 

“Time,” said Vanto, his voice quavering, as soon as the five minutes were up. Thrawn pulled away, immediately setting to work on his third skin sample. This one, too, proved untainted. 

“Fascinating,” said Thrawn, almost sounding cheerful.

Faro and Vanto shared a dour look.

“There are, of course, parasites native to this moon,” Thrawn said. “Unfortunately, I haven’t seen references to any such as this. You may have acquired them on the _Chimaera_ or, perhaps more likely, on shore leave.”

Faro furrowed her eyebrows. The _Chimaera_ had been due for a much-needed refitting just two months ago, resulting in thirty days of mandatory shore leave for all personnel while the renovations and software upgrades were completed. 

“But we didn’t go on shore leave together, sir,” she reminded Thrawn. “I don’t believe our paths ever crossed.”

“Are you certain?” Thrawn asked.

Hesitantly, Faro glanced Vanto’s way, prompting him to speak.

“I stayed on Lysatra, sir,” he said with a shrug. “I took a run to two nearby planets for my family’s shipping business — Oon and Kollo-Zarnista — but other than that, I stayed at home.”

“And I was planet-hopping in the Core Worlds, sir,” Faro said. “Coruscant, Kailor Five, Baraboo, Chandrila…. It must have been something we picked up on the _Chimaera_.”

“Perhaps,” said Thrawn, “but I find that unlikely. After all, Knuss's daughter is at university on Coruscant. And you and Commander Vanto are the only staff so far to exhibit symptoms.”

Faro could have heard a pin drop outside in the snow drifts. Lightning flashed across the window; the word hung in the air between them, waiting for someone to acknowledge it.

Vanto obliged. “Symptoms?”

His voice was deadly. Thrawn met Vanto’s eyes placidly, his face expressionless, then turned gradually to face Faro. She stared back at him, and she couldn’t be sure which emotion she was projecting — defiance or fear.

“Yes,” Thrawn said. “Symptoms.”

* * *

_The supply list was written up by Thrawn himself and passed on to Commander Vanto, who requisitioned the necessary items for their trip. When they entered the shuttle and found only one crate waiting for them, Thrawn’s instructions were more than clear._

_“Ensure all our supplies have been delivered,” he said to Vanto before moving on to the cockpit. “If anything is missing, inform me. We shall not leave until every item has been accounted for.”_

_Vanto nodded his understanding. Faro stood nearby, ready to help._

_So Thrawn entered the cockpit and began the pre-flight diagnostic check, certain his orders would be obeyed. When the call came over his comlink and Vanto announced every item was present and accounted for, he had no reason to doubt the veracity of this claim._

_Now, he can only stand before the empty crate and the meager pile of cold-weather clothes and silently curse himself for being so lax._

_“This is all,” he says flatly. Vanto sits on a troop transport bench affixed to the wall, leaning casually forward on his elbows._

_“Yeah,” he says, “that’s all.”_

_It’s unusually informal behavior from Commander Vanto, once again, and the expression on his face is clearly hostile. Thrawn cuts his eyes at Faro, who stands nearby; her eyes are hard and cold, almost aggressive. Her fists are clenched._

_“Commander Faro?” he asks._

_Through gritted teeth, she says, “That’s all.”_

_Thrawn looks down at the pile of clothing at his feet. The items have been thrown carelessly on the floor; at a glance, they seem to match Faro’s and Vanto’s outfits, though in a larger size. He stoops down and pokes through them, searching for gloves, for a face mask, for a hat._

_All three were on his inventory. All three are missing._

_Standing, he checks the crate again, pointlessly reassuring himself that it’s still empty. Also on his inventory, also missing, are seven days’ worth of dehydrated, calorie-dense meals for three adult hominids; spare heating coils; lightweight, portable datapads; insulated bedrolls; weather-resistant tents; grip-fast snow boots; vibroblades and hatchets; water purifiers; lightweight plastisteel shovels; large daypacks; and, of course,_ real _cold-weather clothes._

_Not these._

_Thrawn crouches down again, gathering the loose items of clothing in his arms. The parka is thin, made of cheap material, with synthetic fur along the hood. The thermal body sleeve is broken, its heating coils dead. As a base layer, it’s better than nothing, but only marginally, and it’s certainly not what Thrawn ordered. The snow pants are so thick as to be more an encumbrance than a boon, particularly in a fight._

_He looks up and finds Vanto glaring at him._

_He looks to his left and finds Faro doing the same._

_Slowly, Thrawn stands, suppressing the flicker of unease which flares in him (another thing from his inventory that they’re missing, he notes: flares). It is clear that Vanto took Thrawn’s inventory and excised almost all useful items from the list; what’s unclear is why. As far as sabotage goes, it’s insultingly and embarrassingly blatant. And quite unlike Vanto to sabotage him; perhaps he could blame Faro for that, but his gut tells him sabotage is quite outside her purview, too._

_There are other forces at work here. He looks Vanto in the eye and sees a peculiar blankness there, beneath the anger. He looks at Faro and spots a muscle jumping in her jaw. Her nose twitches; for a moment, the stiffness of her posture completely breaks and he sees clarity in her eyes._

_It disappears again. Thrawn locks himself in the refresher to check the clothes where they can’t see him, searching silently and quickly for foreign substances. He finds nothing and pulls the outer layer on over his uniform, leaving behind the useless body sleeve in favor of the base layers he’s already wearing._

_Back in the troop transport, he checks his rucksack_ — _something he packed personally, meant as extra supplies_ — _and confirms the three rations packs are still there, along with his palm computer and the bulky datapad he never intended to bring on this trip._

_First Faro insists he allow her and Vanto to accompany him planet-side, eschewing his stormtrooper escort. Then Vanto discards the majority of their supplies and demands, unsuccessfully, to land the shuttle himself._

_Thrawn holds the tracking beacons in the palm of his hand, staring down at them. The mountains here are steady; an avalanche will only occur if there is an explosion. An explosion will only happen if someone stationed on this moon_ — _Varren Knuss, perhaps_ — _has been informed ahead of time where the shuttle would land. Perhaps this is why Vanto asked to land, and if so, it explains why he did not fight particularly hard to convince Thrawn; regardless of who lands the ship, Vanto can send them the coordinates by comm. Being in the troop transport rather than the cockpit only means Vanto must work slightly harder to conceal his communications._

 _But if multiple sets of explosives have already been laid, the theoretical attacker may only discharge one set_ — _the set corresponding to the shuttle’s landing site_ — _but doing so will certainly set off the other explosives, unless the attacker has found a way to isolate each charge from the next. There are ways do so; Thrawn has seen that technology before._

_With the Grysks._

_He hands the tracking beacons to Vanto and Faro. He confirms that Vanto still has the datacard of sector reports. Interesting that Vanto hasn’t dumped it yet; even more interesting if he keeps it after the avalanche hits._

_If he doesn’t, then it seems most likely Thrawn has walked into a potentially fatal trap, with his two closest allies engineering his demise._

_If he does, the only possible conclusion is even worse._

_He’s given them the tracking beacons. Now he gives Faro the grip-fast gloves he thought to pack._

_He’ll do his best, naturally, to keep them safe._

* * *

The next morning, Faro watched as Thrawn discarded the used methanol and filled the tub again. Her eyes were deeply shadowed, and she knew Vanto was awake but hadn’t left his room; she imagined neither of them got much sleep last night. The list of symptoms Thrawn had laid out for them yesterday was still swimming before Faro’s eyes.

Aggressive behavior. Isolated instances of memory loss or — even worse — memory discrepancies. Stuff that just didn’t make sense, like the fact that Faro remembered Thrawn inviting her on this mission, whereas Thrawn said she’d invited herself. Or the fact that both Faro and Vanto remembered opening the crate and finding nothing but clothes inside, yet Thrawn claimed they must have dumped the extra supplies in secret.

Although he’d been more than willing to list their symptoms, Thrawn was close-lipped on what he believed to be the cause. He’d refused to speculate about the parasites the night before, and Faro doubted he’d be willing to go over it today. 

She eyed the chem lab. Thrawn had been close-lipped about the aerogel, too, refusing to say why he was making it. He’d hidden the twelve boxes of finished product out of sight — though Vanto had found them already, Faro knew — and refused to acknowledge how suspicious his own behavior was.

 _But did we_ ask _him why he’s making more?_ said a tiny voice in Faro’s brain. Frowning, she pushed this thought away.

She ran through the uses of aerogel in her mind. Insulation, of course — Thrawn had stressed that one so thoroughly it almost seemed like he wanted to suppress all other ideas. Faro furrowed her eyebrows, trying desperately to remember everything she knew about the substance.

It could be used to make toothpaste, she knew. And synstone, but she doubted Thrawn wanted to build anything.

And it could be used to make pesticide.

Surreptitiously, Faro glanced at Thrawn again, taking in his unreadable eyes, his blank face. She could study him all day, she knew, and never get an inkling of his true intentions.

(Only that wasn’t true, and the little voice in the back of her mind reminded her of it. She _knew_ Thrawn; she could tell when he was distressed, like he had been yesterday when she and Vanto stood on either side of him, and she could tell when he was tired or, infrequently as it occurred, when he was irritated.)

But he was unreadable.

And you couldn’t trust an unreadable man. You couldn’t trust a chem lab when you didn’t know what it was truly being used for; you couldn’t trust instructions on how to make aerogel when they came from Thrawn. How much of her knowledge of this mission was independent and how much of it came from a single, unquestioned source?

Did she know _anything_ about this moon that Thrawn hadn’t told her? That hadn’t come from a datacard he might have stuffed full with erroneous information?

Could she trust him?

She turned her eyes away from Thrawn with careful casualness, forcing herself to look out the window instead.

When Thrawn raised his eyes from the methanol to look at her, she missed it entirely.

* * *

At lunchtime, Thrawn left the safehouse, citing a need for fresh air; he knew from the wooden expressions on Faro’s and Vanto’s faces that they didn’t accept this explanation. Then again, they weren’t meant to accept the explanation; at this point, he knew, no explanation would soothe their suspicions.

While he was outside, they would sabotage his chem lab. This was not a theory; it was a certainty. Even as he closed the door behind him, he could hear Vanto’s chair pushing back and Faro’s quiet footsteps as she crossed the floor from the kitchen to the small table where the aerogel was soaking.

They were intelligent individuals, and Thrawn had no doubt they would succeed in sabotaging his project; perhaps they would succeed so well that, even knowing they had done it, he would find no evidence of the fact until two days from now when it came time to transfer his concoction to the supercritical drying chamber.

Still, he wasn’t worried.

He _intended_ for them to sabotage the aerogel. What did it matter to him if his decoy was destroyed?

Outside the safehouse, Thrawn moved over the hard-packed snow banks to the back of the house, where he could work without being heard. In the days since the blizzard which trapped them here, there had been no further snowfall, allowing the drifts on the ground to settle and become firm. The banks against the back of the house would provide excellent soundproofing.

Once there, Thrawn turned to face the rows of safehouses to the south, his eyes narrowed against the sun and the blinding snow. Varren Knuss had visited all of those safehouses, but he’d made only one into a temporary home — Thrawn suspected it was the fifth one to the southeast. He’d seen a strand of artificial, pink fibrous material caught in the doorframe of that house and suspected it to be wool-based insulation; since anyone native to this moon would know the houses were fitted out with aerogel insulation, it could only be an outsider who’d brought wool-based insulation here. And only an outsider of narrow vision, at that.

Thrawn had found that many academics were, disappointingly, men of narrow vision. He kept his eyes on the safehouses as he reached into his parka and extracted the item he’d been working on ever since he secretly pocketed a handful of finished aerogel the day before:

An impedance matcher.

With this, he could theoretically boost his signal enough to reach the _Chimaera_ , especially since the lightning storm had finally abated. Thrawn switched his comlink on, noting with satisfaction the blinking green light which indicated a strong signal.

He keyed to the _Chimaera’s_ secure channel. He hit the output button.

And he’d expected it, but he couldn’t help but be a little disappointed when the comlink failed to connect yet again. Thrawn tried a second time, concealing his bitterness flawlessly despite the complete lack of witnesses here. He tried a third time, automatically clicking the output button as his eyes roved from one safehouse to the next.

His workmanship was flawless; the impedance matcher was working perfectly. Neither Faro nor Vanto could have sabotaged it, as Thrawn hadn’t slept the night before, giving them no opportunity to remove the device from his chest pocket and tamper with it. Still, the comlink wouldn’t connect.

Thrawn turned the comm off and tucked it back into his parka. Someone was blocking his signal with a jammer.

Varren Knuss was here. It couldn’t be denied in the slightest at this point; he was here, and he’d lured Thrawn here as well, and since it was clear by now that Knuss had no inclination to kill Thrawn, there must be working transportation hidden somewhere on the moon. 

An assassin might disable his own ship in some cases, especially if he plans to kill himself after fulfilling his assignment. But a recruiter? A recruiter needs some way to take his new recruits off-planet again.

Thrawn shot a quick, sharp look at the fifth safehouse again, making sure to gaze at each of the shelters in turn so as to attach no particular significance to the fifth. Then, maintaining the blankness of his face, he went back inside.

It was time to move.

* * *

“Move?” Faro repeated. Her face was carefully blank, but she figured Thrawn could probably read it anyway. “Move where? To another safehouse?”

Thrawn shrugged his parka off, hanging it on the back of a kitchen chair, and moved through the small living space without answering. Irritated, Faro fell into step behind him, unwilling to let him get away without at least telling her where they were headed. They passed Vanto’s room, and Faro heard his door open a moment later — no doubt he’d heard both sets of footsteps going past and decided to investigate. 

“We’re moving,” Faro said as Vanto hurried to catch up with them.

“Moving?” he repeated, baffled. “Moving where? Did we get in touch with the _Chimaera_?”

Faro could only shrug. She came dangerously close to answering the second question with a confident “no” before she realized she couldn’t say; she hadn’t seen Thrawn working on an impedance matcher, but thinking back on it now, she remembered the secret project he’d hidden from view the night before. Most likely, he’d built one during the night and already attempted to contact the _Chimaera_.

So had he succeeded? Or had he failed?

And was he hiding the news from Faro and Vanto because of the parasites, or was that only a convenient excuse?

They followed Thrawn into the third, unused bedroom and stopped dead in the doorway. The room was a mess; dusty canvas bags were in a heap in the corner, while a massive waterproof tarp lay over the floor. Faro spotted stacks of rations against the far wall, along with a small wooden crate which, when she stepped closer to peer inside, turned out to be full of heating coils.

“Are these … from our body sleeves, sir?” Faro asked, eyebrows furrowed. Thrawn knelt in the middle of the room and started carefully folding the tarp into a small square.

“Yes,” he said. “Aerogel is a remarkably efficient conductor of heat. Our body sleeves are now fully functional.”

Somehow, Faro didn’t find this comforting. “We’re not moving to another safehouse,” she said, “are we?”

“No,” said Thrawn. He reached over and dragged one of the canvas bags to him, sliding the folded tarp inside. He layered a series of ropes — where the hell had he found ropes? — over it before carefully slotting a small helping of rations inside.

“That’s a tent, isn’t it,” said Vanto flatly.

“Yes,” said Thrawn.

“We’re going _camping_.”

This time, Thrawn didn’t bother to answer. He zipped the canvas bag — an old-fashioned zipper, Faro noticed, not a quick-seal strip — and shunted it to the side, immediately setting to work on a second bag. 

“Commander Vanto will carry the tent,” he said. “Commander Faro will carry the rations. I will carry nothing. Do you understand?”

He looked up at them sharply. Faro felt her throat tighten as she met Thrawn’s eyes.

She and Vanto had both been infected by parasites — parasites which Thrawn believed were altering their brains. Each of them had sabotaged the mission in some way at least once, and Thrawn knew about it; neither of them had any memory of those actions. It made sense to conclude that one of them might sabotage the mission again. And of all the officers aboard the _Chimaera,_ only Faro and Vanto had been infected; given their close working relationships with Thrawn, it might be surmised that they had been targeted in order to hurt him.

But while they had certainly worked together to trap the three of them here, neither of them had made any attempt on Thrawn’s life. It could be assumed, then, that their purpose was not to hurt him but to isolate him here for reasons unknown. It could perhaps be assumed they were incapable of hurting Thrawn entirely. 

Faro glanced at Vanto. He glanced back at her, his eyes rimmed with shadows, his lips set into a frown.

It could _not_ be assumed they were incapable of hurting _each other_. By giving them the supplies necessary to his own survival, Thrawn ensured they wouldn’t be able to.

“It’s a gamble, sir,” said Vanto, his voice low. “You don’t know that we …. Assuming we’re being controlled by something, or someone else, you don’t know for sure that we can’t…”

“Your concerns are noted, Commander,” said Thrawn. He finished off the second pack and handed it to Faro. 

“Noted and dismissed,” said Vanto bitterly. Thrawn stood, brushing the dust off his trousers and handing the first pack to Vanto with one eyebrow raised.

“I see the parasites have not affected your sense of humor,” he said.

Scowling, Vanto took the bag. Faro weighed her own pack in her hands, glancing between her admiral and her fellow commander. 

“So where are we going?” she asked.

* * *

The snow was blinding and the wind stung every inch of Faro’s face; all she wanted to do was keep her head down and plow through until they reached whatever area Thrawn arbitrarily decided was good enough to make camp.

What she adamantly _didn’t_ want to do was have a question-and-answer session.

“You noted the lack of transitional technology in the safehouses, I’m sure,” said Thrawn, who was several steps ahead of Faro and Vanto, unhindered by a heavy pack. 

“Yes,” said Vanto, sounding breathless. 

“Everything there,” Thrawn continued, “was either older than fifty years or manufactured within the last three. Why do you suppose that is?”

Faro bent forward slightly, shouldering the weight of her pack as best she could as she high-stepped through the snow. She didn’t answer, and after the silence stretched on for a while, it became clear Vanto wasn’t going to, either.

Undaunted, Thrawn moved on to the next question.

“Why do you suppose we were lured to this planet, rather than to Altha?”

He was leading them uphill, skirting the woods where they’d been attacked a few days before by the gopwolves. Faro was forced to take higher and higher steps to maneuver herself over the snow. 

“I don’t know, sir,” she said a bit impatiently. “But I’m sure _you_ do. Why don’t you tell us?”

Vanto huffed out a breath that could have feasibly been a laugh. If Thrawn was offended by Faro’s brusque tone, he didn’t show it.

Then again, considering he believed both Faro and Vanto to have sabotaged his mission and trapped him here, he was probably quite beyond being offended by brusque tones.

“Our data on this planet was provided to us by Admiral Konstantine,” Thrawn said by way of answer. “It is, so far as we can tell, entirely truthful, but incomplete. Deliberately so. We know that Varren Knuss was, prior to his service as a spy, an esteemed entomologist at Altha’s capitol university. Why would an entomologist be pressed into service for this particular mission?”

Unwillingly, Faro felt the cogs in her mind turning, spurred on not by Thrawn’s question but by a peculiar turn of phrase he’d used while delivering it. “Pressed into service?” she asked. “How do we know he was _pressed_ into anything?”

“His daughter attends an Imperial university,” Thrawn reminded her. “Few ties are stronger than filial loyalty. It is possible — but _highly_ unlikely — that a father would deliberately harm three Imperial officers, knowing the consequences this would bring to his daughter.” 

Normally, Thrawn’s responses to Faro’s questions left her feeling like an idiot. This particular explanation only left her baffled.

“But how would anyone press him into service?” she asked. “The only possible candidate would be someone within the Empire itself, who could threaten his daughter directly. But even then — Knuss has to be smart. He’d have to see that taking out an Imperial Admiral on the orders of some other Imperial isn’t exactly a smart game to play. It’s a lose-lose scenario, sir.”

“Yes,” said Thrawn. “Unless?”

It was Vanto who answered; he’d been trudging along beside Faro silently, but his face was pinched with thought. “Unless it was the Emperor who ordered it,” he said. “Emperor trumps Admiral any day.”

Faro felt a chill go through her that had absolutely nothing to do with the wind. She looked at Thrawn, staring at the back of his head as she waited for him to confirm or deny Vanto’s theory.

“A natural conclusion,” Thrawn ceded, “but based on a faulty premise.” He glanced over his shoulder at Faro. “The _only_ possible candidate, Commander?”

Faro grimaced, simultaneously chagrined and relieved to hear she was wrong. Still, no matter how much she wracked her brains, she couldn’t think of any other possibility. The Rebels certainly couldn’t have persuaded Knuss to put his daughter in danger; if they had the power to infiltrate Coruscant and cause any of the students at her university actual harm, they certainly wouldn’t need to hire a random entomologist from Altha to take out Thrawn. The Rebels simply weren’t organized enough to pull this off.

Which left … who? 

“A personal enemy of yours, sir,” Faro guessed. “Safe bet you have plenty of those.”

“Indeed,” said Thrawn. “Perhaps this particular enemy is more personal than I thought.”

Beside Faro, Vanto’s brow was so furrowed he looked like he might overthink himself into a spontaneous explosion. “Nightswan?” he asked.

 _Nightswan?_ Faro looked between Vanto and Thrawn and tried to suppress the sudden, ludicrous mental image of a maniacal talking bird.

“Unlikely,” said Thrawn drily. “No, I believe this is the work of an alien race from the Unknown Regions — an adversary I’ve encountered many times, but not in connection to the Empire. If I’m right, they’ve turned all of Altha to their cause — not with threats, but with a brainwashing technique which turns the populations of entire planets into obedient slaves.”

Faro faltered; beside her, Vanto halted entirely, his face blank, his posture indicating alarm. Thrawn walked on without them for a few steps before he stopped and turned, his face uncharacteristically easy to read.

He looked tired, Faro thought. Concerned. 

Like a man preparing himself for battle.

“Entire planets…” Vanto said. His words were barely audible over the cold wind. “But … how?”

The weariness on Thrawn’s face transformed, however briefly, into what looked to Faro almost like a scowl. “Their methodology is still unclear,” he said. “It seems likely that parasites are used to infect certain people, but not others; and it seems evident, too, that those infected by parasites are somehow more weakly brainwashed than those without. Fully brainwashed persons become mindless, like droids simply following orders. Those infected by parasites can be influenced, but only slightly, and must first rationalize and then forget their actions in order to maintain sanity.”

His eyes flickered over their heads, to the empty safehouses far behind them. His face hardened.

“I’ve pointed out the lack of transitional technology here,” he said, his voice low. “For fifty years, this colony has been abandoned. Only recently were the safehouses inspected and refitted for modern use, likely by Varren Knuss himself in anticipation of our arrival. You noticed the lack of cold weather gear in Safehouse One?”

Uneasily, Faro glanced at Vanto. His eyes were on Thrawn; he nodded once, grimly. Faro had noticed it, too — the complete absence of parkas, of snow boots, of hats and scarves.

“I believe the Grysks use filial connections to spread their infection,” said Thrawn. “When family members cannot be used, friends will do. The people here had neither. They were workers, all of them without family, assigned houses with fellow employees they barely knew and often disliked. There is evidence of strife or tension in every safehouse I’ve inspected. When Altha was invaded fifty years ago, this planet could not be controlled.

“And the people,” said Thrawn, “were lured from their houses. They left wearing their cold weather gear, and they were killed because they could not be turned.”

There were too many revelations here for Faro to process all at once. They swirled unpleasantly in her head — the image of an entire colony murdered in the snow — an entire planet and its surrounding system made into slaves — Knuss’s daughter, so young she had to be one of the infected, now living in an Imperial academy in a different system, making friends, spreading the disease — and the emotional connection, the sheer horror of someone’s love for their family and friends dooming them all—

Her eyes caught Vanto’s. He was staring back at her.

Vanto, with whom she had lunch nearly every day.

Vanto, who caught her eyes and made faces with her any time Thrawn said something exasperating on the bridge.

Vanto, her friend, who was infected like she was.

And Thrawn, who was not.

She glanced back at her admiral, saw the tension on his face as he watched her come to this realization. His eyes flicked between her and Vanto; his mouth was set into a frown.

“You understand,” he said heavily, “why I have kept the both of you at arm’s length.”

Faro couldn’t respond. Her throat was tight; all she could do was stare down at her feet; Vanto said nothing, either, adjusting the straps of his pack nervously. He was unable to hide the dismay on his face; Faro suspected she wasn’t doing well at it, either.

She thought of the night she and Thrawn had lain beside each other in the shelter, talking quietly until they fell asleep. 

She thought of the next day, how she’d tended his wounds after the beasts attacked them.

And the day after that, when he’d looked at her coldly every time she spoke, when he’d moved away whenever she came near.

“An entire planet under their control,” Thrawn said finally, his voice flat. Changing the subject. “And they selected an entomologist for this task. Why?”

Faro couldn’t quite look at him yet. She stared at the tree line just meters away and tried to force her mind back on track.

She saw a flicker of movement in the trees — a flurry of energy, like wings beating against the wind. She thought of the avians they’d seen nesting in the trees on the way here and knew instinctively she was looking at something different now.

She opened her mouth. The word “Sir?” was lost in a combination of the wind and Vanto’s answer to Thrawn’s question, which came out much louder than Faro’s hesitant warning.

“The lymoths,” Vanto said.

And suddenly, bursting from the trees before Thrawn could answer, the lymoths were there.

* * *

There were thousands of them. The beating of their wings was thunderous, drowning out any exclamations from Vanto or Faro. Quickly, Thrawn lost them in the swarm; he knew, at first, that Faro must be somewhere southeast of him, that Vanto must be somewhere southwest. 

But then he lost sight of everything but the moths, and he couldn’t be sure exactly where he was in relation to his commanders — if he’d moved, if they’d moved. If Varren Knuss was here or if he’d released the moths remotely.

It was … disorienting. Peculiarly so. The moths swarmed, but did not land. They hovered around Thrawn, blocking his view of the surrounding land — the trees, the snow, the safehouses — but did not attack. Perhaps they were incapable of attack. A distraction, then, that much was obvious, but …

Thrawn’s eyes caught on a pattern before him. The wings fluttered; one second, the pattern was there. The next second it was gone, flickering in and out of view too quickly for him to catch every detail.

But…

There. Gone. There and gone again. The pattern on the wings flashing before him.

 _Your brain is set up differently,_ someone whispered in his head. _It’s like nobody else’s I’ve seen before._

There and gone again.

_Logical, mathematical. All your thoughts fold into each other like an equation. It’s like looking at numbers on a datapad._

There—

Thrawn turned, following the pattern with his eyes. The pattern was natural, not painted on. He knew this from his examination of the preserved specimens found in every safehouse. 

_It’s like your entire mind is this orderly pattern,_ said the voice.

But patterns could be bred. An entomologist would know how to do it. With years of empty time and nothing better to do, he could design a pattern and breed the moths selectively until he had it.

 _And the only thing that can disrupt it,_ said the voice, _is another pattern._

There and gone again. He’d lost it. He turned around, one hand on his blaster, and waited for the pattern to present itself, for the pattern to make sense. His thoughts stuttered. 

Faro was—

There and gone.

Vanto was—

There! There, and gone again.

He needed to—

There and gone—

A blaster shot rang out. The moths before him were caught in the energy blast; they went up in flames, burning for only a handful of seconds, disintegrating in the air.

 _Only I don’t know what pattern that would be,_ said the voice in his head. Thrass, before the Sight left him. _And I hope I never find out._

* * *

When the blaster rang out, the moths scattered. When the moths scattered, they could all see each other again.

Vanto, kneeling in the snow, his eyes darting around, taking in as much information as he could. Thrawn, chest heaving, eyes glazed. Varren Knuss at the tree line, his face slack, a blaster in his hand.

Faro, on the ground, her lips pulled back in a grimace, her teeth bared.

Faro, bleeding in the snow.

They noticed her all at once, all three of them. Frozen, Vanto could only stare. She looked at Varren Knuss, saw the blankness in his eyes and the sweat on his upper lip, knew he wasn’t even aware of what he’d done. And then, wincing from the pain in her shoulder, she looked at Thrawn and saw him staring back at her.

Her heartbeat was rushing in her ears. Through the pain, she couldn’t hear the crunch of snow beneath his feet. One moment he was meters away; the next he was kneeling at her side.

But she heard him say, “Karyn,” the word escaping from his lips as little more than a breath.

Suddenly, it all clicked.

The moths in each of the safehouses. The patterns on their wings. The Grysks, sending an entomologist instead of a soldier to turn Thrawn to their side. She couldn’t pretend she knew how it worked, but she looked into Thrawn’s eyes and knew it had. The infection of Faro and Vanto, the two officers closest to Thrawn, his aide and his second-in-command.

They weren’t trying to kill Thrawn, that much had been obvious for a long time now.

They were weakening his mind. They were recruiting him.

And Faro and Vanto were the bait.

* * *

His parka was off and pressed against the wound to Faro’s abdomen in a matter of seconds, but to Thrawn it felt like twenty minutes went by before he was able to put pressure on the wound. This was not entirely due to concern; he could hear the breath coming out of him in gasps, but he heard it as though through a fog. He could see his arms moving — trained so well in battlefield medicine that he operated on muscle memory — but they felt like they were moving through water, and he could see light trailing off them, turning every movement into a blur.

With an effort, he glanced to the side, saw Vanto subjugating Knuss, bringing him to his knees in the snow. It felt like an hour later when he turned his gaze back to Faro and caught her eyes on him.

She looked neither fearful nor concerned. The emotion in her eyes was easy for Thrawn to identify; he’d seen it a thousand times before, all his life. Still, his blood ran cold and his thoughts ground to a halt when he saw it.

It was hatred. His brain stuttered again, like a glitch in a computer or a quadrail jumping the tracks, his thoughts hopping over one another. Crashing; circling each other; one thought eating the next thought’s tail. He closed his eyes and saw the pattern on the lymoths’ wings flashing before him.

He opened his eyes and saw Faro’s face twisted into a snarl.

“Get off me,” she said.

His hands were on her stomach, applying pressure to the wound. Slowly — impossibly slowly — his eyes tracked down to the parka, to the blood flecked on his hands and melting the snow.

It was like being drunk, Thrawn marveled, only he’d never really been drunk before. It was like being knocked out in battle and struggling to come up with a plan before you’re fully awake.

“Get _off_ me,” Faro said again, and this time she kicked at him, her knee coming up and striking weakly against his leg. She struggled, pulled away from him, tried to force his hand away from her wound.

“I—” Thrawn said. The rest of the sentence wouldn’t come. He couldn’t think of the words. Nausea spiked through him, and as he forced Faro to lie still — fought her automatically — he turned and stared at Varren Knuss again, saw that blank face staring at nothing.

Looked into Knuss’s eyes and saw the thoughts circling each other there, too. Thoughts born and aborted; concepts killed before they were developed; free will disintegrating along with the structure of Knuss’s scientific mind. He saw Vanto’s face, too — the concern and confusion there, for Thrawn and for Faro — and then pain lanced through his hand and his attention jolted, focus slipping through his fingers once more.

Back to Faro. She’d grabbed his hand in hers, raised it to her mouth. Bit viciously into the flesh there; broken the skin. Thrawn noted the pain and the blood with something like wonder, unable to process what she’d done.

When she spit at him, he didn’t try to dodge it.

“Alien scum,” Faro said, and her voice was trembling. Hatred and tears making her throat tighten. Impotent rage. “I’d rather die than have you touch me. Get _off_ me. Get off me!”

Violently, she bucked beneath him, forcing his uninjured hand off her wound. The parka stuck to her, glued to her burnt skin by coagulated blood. Still holding onto his left hand, she bared her teeth again and dug her nails into the red chilblains dotting his fingers, ripping them open. Blood streaked down Thrawn’s fingers, but he didn’t pull away.

Dimly, he heard Vanto’s voice, horrified: “Faro!”

Beneath Thrawn, grimacing through the pain, Faro pulled her knees to her chest, put them between herself and her admiral. She planted her boots on his chest and kicked, desperate to get him away from her — and the whole time, her eyes burned, locked on his.

“I’m not going to die like this,” she said, breathless now. Fading. “Bad enough to serve under an alien. To fake respect. Force myself to be amicable. I’m not going to die with that—” She turned her head, addressed Vanto. Refused to look Thrawn in the eye. “—that _thing_ anywhere near me! Get it _away_!”

Her voice was harsh. She kicked again, and this time her boots caught Thrawn in his fractured ribs and he pitched back, landing on one elbow in the snow. He could see death creeping into Faro’s eyes, but still she tried to fight him.

Her voice rose to a howl, and in it Thrawn could hear fear. Hatred. Despair. 

“Get it away from me, Eli! Don’t let it touch me, please!”

Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, streaked down the sides of her face into the snow. 

“I’d rather die than let it touch me,” she said. Her voice was a gasp now. Thrawn forced himself to sit up, reached for the makeshift bandage, felt blood soaking through it. He leaned over Faro, looked into her eyes.

They were open. He saw nothing there.

* * *

“Wrap his hands,” Thrawn said. “He will try to harm himself rather than assist us.”

Vanto obeyed; Varren Knuss knelt before him, hands behind his back, and somehow managed to be both pliant and unyielding all at once. His hands flopped in Vanto’s as he wrapped them tightly with strips from the tent Thrawn had packed, making the whole ordeal take longer than if he’d just complied.

Across from Vanto, Thrawn stood with Faro’s body in his arms, mindful of the wound on her abdomen. Her head lolled against his chest; Thrawn’s posture was weary, his face difficult to read.

But his eyes were sharp again, Vanto noticed with a mixture of dismay and relief. His eyes were sharp — and Vanto’s were, too, and suddenly he could remember a dozen shameful things he’d forced himself to forget. His attempts at sabotage — his effort to land the shuttle — his quick transmission to Knuss, alerting him of their coordinates. 

Vanto aimed his blaster at the back of Knuss’s head. “Walk,” he said.

The voice that answered him was dull and garbled. “Won’t,” said Knuss.

Vanto let the blaster rest against Knuss’s skull. “Won’t what?”

“Won’t tell you,” Knuss said, eyes on the ground. “Won’t bring you to my ship.”

Thrawn’s voice cut through the prisoner’s protests. “You have already told us where your ship is,” he said coldly, “whether you meant to or not. We are bringing you there as a favor. You will leave this planet as our prisoner or you will stay here to starve.”

“I choose to stay.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Vanto said. He nudged Knuss, first with the blaster, then with his boot. “Get up.”

This time, after only a short hesitation, Knuss obeyed. He stumbled to his feet, snow spraying outward as he half-fell for the first few steps forward. When he caught his balance, he looked over his shoulder at Vanto. There was no sign of independent intelligence in his eyes.

“Move,” said Vanto, his voice tight. Louder, so Thrawn could hear him, he said, “Sir? Which way are we going?”

“We continue northeast,” said Thrawn. “Not far now.”

Indeed, it wasn’t. They walked in silence for two kilometers with Thrawn leading the way and Faro in his arms. Each time Vanto glanced up and saw her — her closed eyes, her right arm dangling over the snow — his chest tightened, emotions broiling up in him he didn’t know how to name. Beneath the anger and sense of betrayal was an anxiety he couldn’t quite bury. 

In less than an hour, they reached the ship. From the ground, it was obvious — the durasteel exterior glinted, half buried in snow — but from the sky it would be invisible. A canopy of severed branches from nearby trees covered it, that peculiar red fringe hiding any glimpse of the ship from sight. Vanto didn’t need Thrawn to explain how he’d figured out where it was: anyone who knew their trajectory from the _Chimaera_ would have logically parked here, on the other side of the forest, where they weren’t likely to be seen.

At the door to the ship, Thrawn paused, shifting his grip on Faro to hit the access pad. The door opened with a pneumatic hiss; a moment later, Thrawn disappeared inside. From his position, Vanto could just barely tell what Thrawn was doing — he watched the admiral lay Faro out on what looked to be a standard troop transport rack. 

Before turning back to Vanto and Knuss, Thrawn checked her breathing: even, steady. He checked her wound: halfway cauterized, no longer bleeding. He located the medkit, aware of Vanto and Knuss in his periphery, both of them standing, both watching him, one with interest, one without.

He tended to Faro’s wounds clinically, emotionlessly. He applied a bacta gel to the worst of it, watched as her face slackened when the pain-alleviation kicked in.

Her eyelids fluttered. Then and only then did Thrawn leave the ship, closing the door behind him.

Vanto watched silently, his blaster pressed against the small of Knuss’s back, as Thrawn approached. The admiral stopped only when he and Knuss were eye to eye; his face was lined where Knuss’s was smooth, his eyes ringed with shadows where Knuss’s were blank and glassy.

“Your daughter,” Thrawn said, voice heavy. “What is her name?”

For a few minutes, all Vanto heard was the wind whistling through the petrified trees. He stared up at the back of Knuss’s head, certain the man wouldn’t respond. Before him, Thrawn watched Knuss with narrowed eyes.

The answer came as a whisper. “Ta’la,” Knuss said. His posture sagged; he seemed for a moment like he might fall to his knees.

“How old is she?” asked Thrawn. 

Knuss was slow to answer again, but marginally faster this time, his voice a little clearer when he spoke. “Nineteen standard years.”

“Your wife is dead,” Thrawn said.

“Yes. Dead.”

“You have no family?” Thrawn asked. “Only your daughter?”

“Yes.”

Thrawn’s eyes flicked to Vanto, then back up to Knuss. His expression was unreadable; the only emotion Vanto could pick up from him was exhaustion.

“And you love her,” Thrawn said. A statement, not a question. 

“Yes,” said Knuss, voice trembling, face blank. “Yes. I do.”

Thrawn inclined his head, eyes sliding closed. “Step back, Commander Vanto,” he said.

Eli did. He took several steps back through the snow, back and to the north, until he stood alongside the wall of Knuss’s ship. He faced his own warped reflection in the durasteel.

He heard Thrawn’s blaster discharge. He heard Knuss’s body hit the snow.

He stared at his reflection a moment longer and closed his eyes.

“Come, Commander,” said Thrawn softly. “Let’s go.”

* * *

When Faro woke up, they were already well on their way to the _Chimaera._ She heard Vanto’s voice in the other room — “Yes, an avalanche, Hammerly” — and forced herself to open her eyes only when she realized it should be Thrawn on the comms. 

Gradually, staring up at the ceiling of an unfamiliar ship, she remembered where she was.

And who had shot her. And who had saved her.

And what she had said; been forced to say.

Groaning, Faro lifted heavy hands, intending to cover her face and wallow for a moment — but as she moved, she felt her fingers brush against someone else’s. Someone cold.

She forced herself to turn her head and look at Thrawn; his hand was close to hers, but not quite touching; as she watched, he moved it out of reach. His gaze was fixed somewhere on the wall.

“Sir,” she said. 

Faintly, Thrawn smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He looked at her, then, and his gaze was sharp and clear.

“Commander Faro,” he said. 

She sat up a little, mindful of the wound on her abdomen — but to her surprise, she felt no pain. Leaning her back against the wall, she surveyed the room, catching sight of Vanto’s pack lying in the corner.

“Varren Knuss?” she asked.

“Dead,” said Thrawn. He stared down at his hands, fiddling absently with a small bacta patch wrapped around one of his fingers. His eyes were absent. “His wife died years ago. He has no other children. With Knuss dead…”

“His daughter will lose her connection to the Grysk,” Faro realized. “And so will anyone she’s infected in the Empire.”

“Yes.”

An elegant solution, Faro thought, and a terrible one. She studied Thrawn, waiting for him to give something away. “There was no saving him? No way to break _his_ connection?”

Thrawn’s face tightened. “No.”

Looking at him, Faro realized she believed without a doubt that this was true. She remembered Knuss’s empty eyes, his slack face. Carefully, she examined her wound, healing visibly beneath the bacta gel. She could hear Vanto in the cockpit, still talking to Hammerly over the comm.

“Sir,” she said finally, forcing herself to speak. “About the things I said …”

“Your quick thinking saved all three of us,” said Thrawn firmly. “It is possible, Commander, that you are the first person to break through the Grysk brainwashing method without causing physical harm. Certainly, you are the first I’ve ever encountered.”

Grimacing, Faro couldn’t find it within her to accept the praise. Whatever existed between herself, Vanto, and Thrawn, she’d fractured it now. It was possible she’d fractured it beyond repair. 

“Why _us_ , sir?” she asked. “Why lure us here?”

“Here,” said Thrawn, “because I have dealt with the Grysks before, and if they lured us to any more populous planet in this sector I would notice the Grysk influence before they had time to enact their plan. Us, because they fear me as an enemy and wished to recruit me as an ally.”

His eyes cut to Faro; she met his gaze, but couldn’t read his face. She got the sense there was something he wasn’t saying, something he was playing close to the chest.

“You and Commander Vanto,” Thrawn said softly, “because they needed a connection in order to recruit me. They have tried in the past; they’ve never succeeded.”

A connection. Herself, Vanto.

“Never succeeded,” Faro repeated. “Why not?”

Thrawn’s voice was flat when he responded. “How would they infect me, Commander? What emotional connection was there to exploit?”

She met his eyes steadily. She refused to look away.

“What connection is there now?” she asked.

* * *

Their ship docked onto the _Chimaera’s_ hangar bay three hours after they left the moon — and Varren Knuss’s body — behind. They exited together, haggard and silent, wearing clothes stolen from colonists who died in the snow fifty years ago. Vanto went first, and Faro saw that despite his exhaustion, he’d fixed his face into something calm and stoic, refusing to let anyone in the hangar see what he didn’t want them to see. 

At the ship’s exit, Faro stood by her admiral’s side, each of them half a step behind Vanto. They paused in the doorway, both of them hesitating, though she couldn’t say why.

His fingers brushed hers. Faro glanced down, saw his blue skin against hers. She looked up and caught him staring down at her.

Red eyes into brown. Fingers touching.

She smiled up at him; she saw his lips twitch.

Without a word, they followed Vanto onto their ship. There was work still to be done.


End file.
